Brute Science
by CoolBreeze1
Summary: John finds himself on the wrong side of science, and learns first hand what it means when certain scientific assumptions turn out to be wrong. This is pretty creepy, with some heavy Shep whump.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This story has been nagging at me for a long time. I've loved the idea of it since I started, but it has proven to be much more difficult to actually write than I anticipated. I thought I was going to have it finished last weekend, but alas, not quite. I'm almost done with it for sure now, so thought I'd start posting the earlier chapters while I tie up the end._

_Thank you a hundred times over to my betas everybetty and kriadydragon for looking the first draft of this over. I knew there was some problems with it, but I couldn't quite figure out how to fix them. It was like I was hitting my head against the wall. Their comments, corrections, and questions really helped me step back and figure out what I needed to do to finally finish this story._

_So, that being said, here is the story! I changed the beginning slightly, the middle a little more, and totally revamped the ending. And I am much happier with the outcome so far. Hope you like it!_

**WARNINGS: **_Set sometime late season 2/early season 3, but no specific spoilers for any episode. This is intense, heavy Shep whump, both physical and emotional, and just so you know, pretty creepy._

* * *

**BRUTE SCIENCE**

_Chapter 1—Prologue_

"—medical team!" Rodney McKay's high-strung voice echoed throughout the gate room. Ronon emerged seconds behind him, missing the first part of the sentence but having a pretty good idea of what he'd said. The Marines on either side of the gate raised their weapons, shooting confused glances at each other.

Ronon had one arm around John Sheppard's waist and had slung one of the man's arms around his own shoulders. He kept a firm grip on Sheppard's wrist, managing to hold up most of his weight. Ignoring the Marines standing on either side of the gate, he took a few more steps. Sheppard tried to help, half shuffling-half hopping on one leg, but his other leg dragged lifelessly behind him.

"Where's the medical team?" McKay yelled, both panicked and irate. Ronon heard Teyla step through the gate, followed by the wormhole itself shutting down. He stood still, continuing to hold Sheppard but no longer sure whether they should try to make it to the infirmary on their own or wait.

Teyla stepped up next to him, putting her hands on Sheppard's face and lifting it gently toward her.

"John, we are home. In Atlantis. You will be alright," she murmured.

Ronon tried to look down at Sheppard but got a face full of his friend's spiky black hair. Sheppard was sagging more and more, and the little energy his team leader had had on the planet seemed to have been used up on the run back to the gate.

"What's going on?" Elizabeth Weir asked, running down the stairs toward the small group in front of the gate. Carson Beckett arrived at the same time through a side door, a gurney and medical team in tow.

"Sheppard was attacked," Ronon stated.

"I do not think it was an attack, Ronon," Teyla answered, shaking her head.

"What the bloody hell is going on?"

Sheppard moaned as the last of his strength seemed to give out, and Ronon tugged on his waist to keep him from falling over. Beckett waved the gurney over and Ronon moved forward, dragging Sheppard over and onto it. He laid him face down, but when he lifted Sheppard's legs onto the end of the gurney, the medical team, Beckett, and Weir all jumped back in alarm. The Marines had raised their weapons again, looking decidedly nervous.

"What is that thing on his leg?" Weir asked at the same time as McKay danced around in front of the gun-wielding Marines.

"Put those away," he yelled. "What are you going to do? Shoot your commanding officer?"

The Marines lowered their weapons, but McKay continued to yell over Weir's demands for answers, Beckett yelled at his medical team, and Teyla tried to calm everyone. Amidst the chaos, Ronon knelt down near the head of the gurney, placing a hand on Sheppard's head.

"Hang on, Sheppard," he said. It was his first clear look at his friend's face since picking him up out of the swamp they'd been attempting to cross and racing back to the stargate and Atlantis. Sheppard's face was pale and sweaty, and he was panting heavily. His eyes fluttered open and closed, and occasionally rolled around in his head. He was conscious, but Ronon wondered if he was aware of his surroundings.

"What happened, lad?"

Beckett's quiet voice near his head startled him out of his thoughts. He looked up at the doctor, then at Sheppard, then at the doctor again. The noise and panicked yells of McKay and Weir and Teyla and more Marines pouring into the gate room swirled around them, but Beckett was quiet and confidant, creating an invisible bubble of calm around the trio.

"Not sure, exactly," Ronon answered. "There were a lot of swamplands on that planet. We were trying to work our way around them, but ended up having to cross through one."

Ronon shook his head, and glanced down at Sheppard again.

"Sheppard kind of yelled and then just fell forward," he continued. "We pulled him back the way we'd come, out of the swamp. He was shaking hard and grabbing at his leg. That's when we noticed that thing had attached itself to him."

Ronon looked toward the end of the gurney, where the medical team was cautiously examining the back of Sheppard's right leg. The thing in question was gray and slimy, looking almost like a glob of mud, except that it was hard and wrapped tightly around Sheppard's calf. The head, or what appeared to be the head, was pressed into the top of the muscle, just below the back of his knee, and blood and swamp mud dripped freely into a puddle beneath his leg.

Beckett poked the blob, to no effect. "It looks a bit like a bloody sting ray wrapped around his leg," he mumbled as he prodded the creature. Ronon stepped back, pushed politely out of the way by a nurse as she strapped an oxygen mask to Sheppard's face. They raised the gurney in one deft movement and then Beckett was yelling clipped orders as they rushed out of the room.

Ronon followed, hearing the chaos behind him grow suddenly quiet at the departure of their main topic of conversation. He walked just fast enough to keep Sheppard in sight, and could see even from a dozen feet away that his friend had begun to shake.

"He's going into shock," Beckett called out. "We need to get this…this sting ray thing off of him ASAP."

"We've already put a call down to the zoologist labs. Doctor Lane is meeting us in the infirmary," one of the nurses answered.

Beckett leaned forward, and Ronon could just make out the words. "Hang on, John. We'll get that thing off you in no time."

The group rushed into the infirmary, and the gurney and surrounding medical personnel surged forward. Ronon was stopped by a nurse from going any farther, but he knew the drill. He stood in the center of the infirmary trying to make sense of the sounds of doctors and nurses working on Sheppard. The rest of his team and Weir finally caught up and burst through the doors. The four of them stood there for a moment before Ronon turned to the two people from Earth.

"What's a sting ray?"

* * *

Ronon stayed in the infirmary long enough to know that Sheppard was stable and that the sting ray thing had—after many hours—finally been removed from his calf. The zoologist, Doctor Lane, could hardly contain his excitement as he exited the infirmary behind two airmen pushing a large aquarium tank on wheels.

Ronon got his first good look at the creature that had attached itself to Sheppard as the aquarium was marched past. The first thing he noticed was that it looked less gray in water than it had wrapped around his friend's leg. It was more of a brownish color with greenish spots. It was also mostly flat, and its edges fluttered in the water to keep it suspended in the middle of the tank. He stepped closer, searching for its head. He could just make out two small, black eyes buried in a small knob of flesh at one end of its flat body.

Ronon tapped the glass, and the Airmen pushing the aquarium stopped. He could see Teyla and McKay behind him, their faces reflected in the glass as they peered closer.

"It really does look like a sting ray, but no tail. Ugly little thing, isn't it?" McKay muttered.

Ronon was about to answer him when the sting ray—for lack of a better word—suddenly unhinged its surprisingly wide jaw, revealing two long fangs set on each side of a row of tiny sharp teeth. He jerked back, his hand reaching instinctively for his gun. Behind him, McKay squawked in surprise. Teyla was a little more composed, but she had jumped just as badly as the rest of them.

Doctor Lane leaned forward, a look of riveted joy on his face. "Fascinating! Look at the size of those fangs!"

"Yeah, I saw them," Ronon deadpanned. "In Sheppard's leg."

The zoologist had the decency to lose the smile splitting his face and move around to the other side of the aquarium. He glanced nervously at Ronon before waving at the airmen to start moving again, and the sting ray behind its glass cage disappeared from sight.

Ronon's face twitched in anger at the callousness of the scientist in regard to his friend, but before he could say anything, Beckett emerged from the back of the infirmary.

"How is he?" Weir asked. Ronon had almost forgotten she was still with them. She had stayed in the background as the other three had crowded around the tank, seemingly the least interested in the latest creature to affix itself to the colonel.

"He's alright for now. We've still got a number of tests to run, but he's stable. He was starting to go into shock when we brought him in, but now that that thing has been removed, he's doing much better."

"Can we see him?" McKay asked.

"How is his leg?" Teyla asked at the same time. Ronon's head swiveled from Beckett to McKay to Teyla, then back to Beckett again.

"The bite marks were fairly deep in the top part of his calf muscle, and they'll take a little bit of time to fully heal, but he should be fine. I'm convinced that creature injected him with venom when it bit him, though. Colonel Sheppard described it as a few minutes of intense pain, followed quickly by numbness throughout most of the lower half of his right leg."

"Sounds like the iratus bug," Weir mumbled.

"Which is exactly the comparison John himself was drawing. That more than anything was probably what had him going into shock in the first place," Beckett replied.

"So, can we see him?" Ronon asked, finally joining the conversation.

"Sorry, not right now. We're still getting him settled and we have to do a few more tests. Give us another couple of hours and then you can stop by for a few minutes."

The others nodded, relieved at the relatively positive report and disappointed at the wait. Ronon believed Beckett—every word of it—but there was still a part of him that needed to see Sheppard alive and well. He hadn't been on Atlantis when the whole Bug Incident had happened, but the stories he'd heard had been terrifying enough, and he had been around for the Bug Conversion thing.

The others headed out the door, reluctantly dragging their feet. McKay said something about getting something to eat, but Ronon wasn't hungry. He was antsy. He could feel the nervous energy down to the tips of his fingers, and sitting in a mess hall was not going to help him at the moment.

"I'll meet you guys later. I'm going for a run," he announced, and took off in a something just slightly slower than a sprint down the hall and toward the nearest pier.

* * *

"…elevate his leg…"

"……don't touch……temperature…"

"…move………test him……"

"…doctor…scanner…if he still…"

The voices, soft ghostly whispers, floated around him. John reached out, trying to grab onto the words. They almost made sense, until he tried to concentrate on the meaning, and then the words slipped out of his grasp and floated away.

"…rain…back to where…"

"….stop looking…hungry……"

"…McKay….work out more…"

Besides the voices, he could just make out the quiet rustling of…of…he wasn't sure of what. Things moved around him, muted and quiet. It was dark and he was hot, and he wondered where he was.

"…check…leg…puncture…"

"….Lane…sting…"

The whispers would grow louder then draw back, fading in and out. John was so tired. He listened to the whispers, wondering what they were saying, but they were soothing, almost melodic, and John felt himself being pulled away again. It was so hot here.

"…Beckett said……venom…testing…"

"…better…"

"……get some rest…you if we find…sure you haven't…"

He became aware of something or someone touching him next. Ghostly hands pressed against his head and face. It grabbed him around his wrist and his bicep, poked him in the ear, pressed against his stomach. Something cool was held to his face, and he sighed in relief. He was still hot. He could feel beads of sweat dripping down his neck and chest and back.

At times, he felt like he was moving. Things shifted around him, below him, above him. The whispers were quiet and soothing, and sometimes something cool would be held against his skin. Hands would lift him, rolling him to one side or another, and he would try to open his eyes at those moments, but the effort was exhausting and the sounds and the hands would slowly fade.

"…can't believe you watched that movie…"

John heard that, more clearly than he'd heard anything before, and he wondered where he was. He could feel something soft and comfortable underneath him. A steady beeping sounded somewhere over his head. He tried to shift around and felt light fabric brushing against his skin.

"I think he moved."

The hands were back, one on his arm and one on the side of his face. They were warm and dry, and he tried to turn toward the hand on his face.

"John?"

He knew that voice.

"Colonel? Are you with us?"

The sounds and senses stopped swirling and began to settle into place. He knew the voices, recognized the hands, could almost identify the rustling and beeping around him.

"John, lad. Open your eyes."

Beckett. John turned his head toward Beckett's voice, moaning slightly at the effort. Why was this so hard?

"Come on, Colonel. I need you to open your eyes."

Eyes, he was saying something about eyes. His eyes. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he became aware completely of his body. His eyes were closed. He felt hot and nauseous and achy. He could feel the hand on his arm squeezing gently, encouraging him.

Light pierced his eyelids as he cracked them open, causing him to groan. Bile surged upward and before he even realized what was happening, he'd been rolled over on to his side. He could feel himself gagging, but everything felt heavy and weak, and he couldn't move.

"It is alright, John," Teyla soothed. Her voice was close to his ear, and the warm, dry hand on his arm moved down to grip his hand. He realized it must belong to Teyla.

He blinked his eyes again as he was returned to his back and someone wiped his face with a cool cloth. This time, he managed to open his eyes and he squinted at the people standing around him. They were blurry and they moved around him cautiously, the swish of their clothing rustling in his ear.

"There you are, lad," Beckett said.

Carson Beckett's face came into focus. The doctor had something in his hand, which he then proceeded to stick in John's ear, and John moaned.

"Ssshhh…be still, John. You have been very sick."

John blinked his eyes again, not realizing that they'd slid shut, and he looked up at Teyla's face. She looked tired, but then she smiled and lost some of the tension and tiredness. John stared at her for a moment until Beckett placed a hand on the side of his face and forced his head to turn.

"How are you feeling, John?" Beckett asked when his face came into view. John was too tired to look anywhere but straight ahead, and Beckett placed himself in his line of sight.

"John?"

"…yeah…" John croaked. His voice was low and raspy, and his throat hurt.

"Good lad," Beckett responded. His eyes creased in concern. "Are you in any pain?"

John paused a moment, wondering what should hurt, but there was no part of his body screaming for attention. He shook his head slowly.

"…hot…" he mumbled.

"Aye, I know. You've been running a fever since we brought you in. You just rest now. We can talk more later."

John's eyes slid shut of their own volition. For a few seconds, he could hear the ghostly whispers of Beckett and Teyla around him, but then those two faded and he drifted into darkness.

* * *

"Is he okay? Because he didn't really seem okay to me," McKay stated.

Ronon nodded his head in full agreement with the scientist's assessment. He looked worriedly down at the pale face of his team leader and friend. Sheppard had woken up for barely a minute, maybe two, and even then, he didn't really seem fully awake. He seemed weak and frail, a look he was not used to seeing on Sheppard.

"He's not okay, Rodney, but he will be," Beckett replied. "The venom from that sting ray was fairly toxic, and Colonel Sheppard got a pretty good dose of it. He's very sick, but he is getting better. You just need to be patient."

"I can be patient," he muttered, and Ronon glanced up in time to see both Teyla and Beckett bite back the smiles that suddenly threatened to split their faces.

Ronon felt the tension that had been coiling in his body since the day before suddenly release at the sight of their very real smiles. Sheppard had gone from shock when they first brought him in to panting and feverish throughout the night. The dark circles under Beckett's eyes attested to the seriousness of his friend's condition, so if the doctor was smiling, then that was a good sign.

"How's his leg?" Ronon asked.

"I was just about to check it again, but so far, it's been okay. We're pumping him full of antibiotics, and it looks like we've managed to avoid any infection."

"The fever was from the sickness caused by the venom?" Teyla asked.

"Aye, it was. His leg should heal up just fine, and our last blood test showed the venom was almost completely out of his system. I know you're all worried about him, but he really is going to be fine."

"Thanks, doc," Ronon answered, standing up and stretching out his back. He slapped McKay on the shoulder. "Let's go get some food."

"I'm not hungry," McKay grumbled, still staring down at Sheppard. The scowl on his face couldn't quite cover his concern.

"Would you like to help me change these bloody bandages?" Beckett asked innocently.

"I suddenly just got very hungry. Why are we still standing here?" He turned to Ronon and waved the man forward. Ronon grinned. As much as he gave McKay a hard time about eating too much and exercising too little, he loved that the scientist was always a willing partner for a snack run.

"I will join you as well. I have not had a chance to eat lunch yet." Teyla stood up, gave Sheppard's hand one final squeeze, and then joined her two teammates.

"See you later, doc," Ronon called out as all three of them piled toward the door of the infirmary, and just barely caught the doctor's exasperated sigh.

* * *

A week later, Ronon walked down a deserted hallway in one of the lower levels of Atlantis. He'd never ventured to this part of the city, but the sounds emerging from some of the zoology labs had him curious now. McKay had explained to him that the doctors in this area studied animals of all kinds, and he was surprised to hear that there was a whole wing of labs that actually had specimens of these animals.

As much as he would love to poke his head into some of those labs now, he was on a mission of sorts at the moment: tracking down one Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. Sheppard had been released from the infirmary earlier that day. His leg was still healing, but he had managed to convince Beckett that he could move around just fine on the crutches. Beckett had finally conceded, but had sent him off with both a set of crutches and a wheelchair.

That same wheelchair had been found in Sheppard's empty quarters about an hour ago, and no response to radio calls had instigated the search. Ronon had a pretty good idea of where his errant friend had wandered off to, though. He walked to the end of the hallway, pushing the empty wheelchair in front of him, until he reached Doctor Lane's lab. Before he could knock, the door slid open.

The lights in the room were off, but the aquariums lining the wall were lit up, making it easy for Ronon to spot the figure at the far end of the room leaning against a pair of crutches. He walked over to his friend, ditching the wheelchair in the middle of the room, and stared at the sting ray hovering in the middle of the aquarium.

"How'd you know I was down here?" Sheppard asked after a minute of silence.

"Didn't know. Thought you might want to take a look at that thing, though."

"Yeah," Sheppard answered quietly. He stared intently at the creature floating in the water in front of him. "Ugly, isn't it?"

Ronon chuckled. "That's exactly what McKay said, then that thing gave us a pretty good look at its teeth."

Sheppard shivered, and Ronon spared a glance at him. He thought he looked pale, but that could have just been from the light of the aquarium.

"You alright?" he asked.

Sheppard shrugged. "Leg still hurts. Otherwise, I guess I'm alright."

Ronon nodded. The puncture wounds from the creature's teeth had been deep, and there'd been talk of nerve damage and more tests—all of which had caused Sheppard to freak out and subsequently clam up whenever it was mentioned. Ronon looked down at the thick bandages wrapped around the man's leg from mid-thigh to ankle, then back at the creature—their sting ray or whatever they called it.

"It looks different," he suddenly said. When he'd seen it in the tank that first day it had been brown and green, the edges of its flat body fluttering rapidly. Today, it was gray and mottled with black splotches, and it seemed to be having a hard time staying at a constant depth. It kept floating up toward the top, then sinking, then floating up again.

"It's dying," a voice answered behind them. Ronon turned around to see Doctor Lane entering the lab and walking cautiously over toward them. Sheppard turned carefully on his crutches to look at the doctor.

"We're not sure why," Lane continued. "We've run every test we can think of, but nothing we do seems to help. I was hoping it would live longer than this. It's a fascinating creature."

Sheppard grunted at that and turned back toward the tank. He shifted slowly, making sure he was balanced on his left leg before moving his crutches and swinging his bandaged right leg forward. Lane glanced quickly at Sheppard's awkward movements before returning his gaze to the creature in the tank.

"Maybe we should take it back to the swamp," Ronon suggested.

"No."

Sheppard's response came quickly, and there was a dark edge to his voice. Ronon looked at his friend's face, saw the fear and anger morph across it.

"No one goes back to that planet," he said.

Ronon shrugged, understanding where is friend was coming from.

"I should have shot the thing," he said after a minute.

"I wish you would have," Sheppard answered. He raised one of his arms to wipe his forehead on his sleeve, and Ronon noticed his face was a little slick with sweat.

"We should head back. Beckett will kill you if he finds out how long you've been on your feet."

Sheppard nodded and turned toward the door. He'd only taken a couple of steps on his crutches before Ronon grabbed the wheelchair and pointed at it. Without a word, Sheppard hobbled toward it and eased himself slowly into the seat. Ronon grabbed the crutches and set Sheppard's bandaged leg onto one of the raised footrests. The fact that Sheppard was letting him do this without complaint spoke volumes about his level of exhaustion, and possibly pain. Beckett was going to kill the man.

"Huh, now that's interesting."

Ronon and Sheppard both looked up at the zoologist. They'd almost forgotten he was still there. Lane stood up from the microscope he was bending over, grabbed a scanner of some sort, and walked back over to the aquarium holding the sting ray.

"Huh…" he repeated.

Ronon looked at Sheppard, who shrugged and waved his hand toward the door. He'd moved about three feet before Lane was standing in front of them and waving his scanner at Sheppard.

"Huh."

"What?" Sheppard asked caustically.

"Your leg…"

"What about my leg?"

"I'm picking up some weird radiation on my scanner…"

"Radiation?" Sheppard choked out. He glanced down at his bandaged leg. Ronon's hand had clenched around the handlebars of the wheelchair, and he had to consciously force himself to relax. In the meantime, Lane had moved back to his lab bench and was jotting something down on paper.

"Yeah. It seems to be coming from both the creature and yourself." As he spoke, he spread out a piece of clear plastic on the table, then a set of scalpel knives.

"Hey!" Ronon yelled at the zoologist. Sheppard had gone rigid in the seat, his hands clenching the armrests until they were completely white. Lane looked up, startled.

"What's going on?" Ronon asked. "What about this radiation?"

"Um, I'm not sure," Lane answered nervously. "I'm about to dissect the creature now, so I may have more information in a few hours."

"Dissect?" Sheppard squeaked, and his body shuddered.

"You may want to take him up to the infirmary and let Doctor Beckett know about this. I'll contact him as soon as I have more information."

Ronon nodded and pushed Sheppard out the door of the zoologist's lab. He glanced back in time to see Lane lift the creature out of the aquarium. Its body flapped limply in the scientist's hands. The scalpels lined up on the table glinted in the soft aquarium lighting.


	2. Chapter 2

_Realized there were some formatting errors that got through so fixed those. Nothing has changed otherwise in this chapter…_

. . .

_Chapter 2_

"Are you ready for this?" Rodney asked as John stepped into the gateroom zipping up his tac vest.

"This isn't my first mission since being back on duty, McKay," he griped. He clipped his P-90 to his vest.

"No, but those other missions were simple cake walks, checking in with people we already know. This one is a new planet."

"Are you nervous?"

"Why would I be nervous? I'm not nervous. We've done this a hundred times before."

John smiled, having successfully turned the conversation away from himself and back on McKay. Not that that was a difficult thing to do, but it still gave him an inordinate amount of pleasure. Ronon and Teyla joined them, and they waited for the stargate to engage.

"How's your radioactive leg?" Ronon asked, grinning.

John rolled his eyes. For whatever reason, the Satedan had found the fact that the creature that had injected John with venom had also injected him with some weird chemical that emitted something—he hadn't actually followed all of Beckett and Lane's explanation. Something that was like radiation but wasn't really. It was also barely detectable but entirely unique. Once it was established that this chemical was not harmful, Ronon had decided it was hilarious and had taken to asking him about it every chance he got.

"Is your leg still glowing in the dark?" McKay had also found it entertaining.

"Ha ha, Rodney. You're hilarious."

"Doc said it would be another month before that stuff leaks out completely," Ronon stated matter-of-factly.

"Too bad it didn't come with a superpower. Usually you get superpowers with exposure to strange, radioactive chemicals."

"Are you sure you can't run really fast on just your right side?"

"Super Sheppard—runs really fast, but in circles," Rodney grinned.

John closed his eyes, resisting the urge to groan. "Did you two not have this exact conversation last night at dinner?" he griped.

"I believe they have had this same conversation at every meal for the last three weeks," Teyla responded, and she seemed as exasperated by it as John. At that moment, the stargate kawooshed to life.

"Colonel, your team is clear to go. Be safe," Elizabeth announced from the balcony. John gave her a quick wave before leading his team through the stargate. The sound of Rodney and Ronon giggling—_giggling?—_cut off abruptly for a few seconds as he emerged on the other side.

He really needed to talk to them about this giggling thing at some point, but he shook it off for the time being and walked toward the MALP sitting on the other side of the DHD. A stiff breeze blew through the small clearing, smelling like rain, and he searched the sky for clouds. A thick canopy of trees swayed overhead, and he was grateful he'd worn his long-sleeved shirt.

The stargate was set at the bottom of a stone cliff, and John could just make out mountains towering up behind the cliff through the thick foliage. The bits of sky visible through the canopy were blue, but the ground was damp and he wondered if it had rained recently. The other three emerged from the stargate and the wormhole shut down. Dense woods surrounded the small clearing, but there was a small path leading away from the stone cliff.

"McKay? Anything on the scanner?" John asked.

"Uh, nope. Nothing actually," he answered. He and Ronon had stopped laughing—all business now that they were offworld—but John could still hear the hint of a smile in the physicist's voice. "Something's messing with these scanners." He shook the Ancient scanner for a second then stared at it again. "There we go. Just the four of us—wait, now we're gone again." He looked up at John. "I don't know if this thing is going to be much help to us on this planet."

John nodded. He didn't like planets that messed with Ancient scanners, but it wasn't the first time and it probably wouldn't be the last. Teyla and Ronon had already turned the MALP around and were in the process of sending it back to Atlantis.

"Guess we're on our own, kids." John watched the MALP disappear back through the event horizon, subconsciously pressing his hand against his right leg. He still felt a little bit of a rush that he had, in fact, not suffered any permanent damage. That had been a little too close for comfort for him.

He shifted his weight, letting his right leg hold all of it as he tested its strength. Beckett had been convinced from the beginning that he would recover completely and had put John through some vigorous physical therapy to keep his muscle tone and strength. John was grateful for it now; it had meant a quick return to active duty.

"We ready?" he asked as the gate shut down. The others nodded and John led the way down the small path through the trees without so much as a limp.

* * *

This world was huge. Ronon glanced around the woods they'd been walking through for the last two hours, surprised at the size of the trees. Sheppard and McKay had chatted about something called sequoias back on Earth for awhile, but all Ronon had gathered was that that place had very large trees as well.

They reached a break in the trees and found a large clearing. They had yet to see any sign of people, or even animals, although the sounds of birds in the distance had been with them during their entire trek through the trees.

He watched Sheppard walking ahead of them. As much as he'd given his friend a hard time, he'd been just as relieved as everyone else when Sheppard's leg had finally healed. The thought of never being able to walk—let alone run and fight—made him shudder. That was something he would never wish on anyone except maybe the Wraith.

They stopped on the edge of the clearing, and Ronon heard McKay flop to the ground behind them. He turned around to see the scientist red-faced and sweating. Teyla and Sheppard stood off to the side, breathing no harder than if they'd spent the last couple of hours sitting in a meeting, and an endurance training plan began to form in his head. It was almost personal now—he would get McKay in shape.

"What are you grinning at?" the physicist grumbled.

"You," Ronon answered. "You're all sweaty and breathing hard."

"Hello? We've been trekking through the woods for the last two hours without a break. Of course I'm sweaty and breathing hard."

Ronon grinned. "Yep. We're going to have to work on that."

McKay sputtered slightly at that last bit, lowering the canteen of water he was about to guzzle. "What do you mean, 'We're going to have to work on that'?" His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Don't worry, McKay. I've got a plan."

Sheppard laughed at that, probably knowing exactly what kind of plan Ronon had in mind. He walked away from the group, scanning the clearing. Ronon looked around as well, but other than the distant sound of chirping birds, the area was quiet.

After a few minutes, they pulled McKay back to his feet and headed out across the large clearing. They made it about halfway across the clearing when Sheppard suddenly stopped, looking around. The others paused too, and in that moment, Ronon heard what had caused Sheppard to hold up a fist.

"I hear something," Sheppard said.

"Some kind of pounding," Ronon responded. It was faint, but it seemed to be growing louder. He, Teyla, and Sheppard spread out, looking for the source of the pounding. The yellow grass in the clearing was tall, though—higher than their waists—and nothing visible was moving around them. McKay slapped the side of his scanner, trying to pick up whatever it was that was approaching.

Because something, or many somethings, was approaching. It was clear now. Sheppard waved them forward, and the four of them began jogging toward the tree line at the opposite end of the clearing. Ronon wondered if they would make cover before whatever was heading their way arrived.

"There!" Teyla yelled a moment later. Ronon turned and could see a small cloud of dust spiraling in the air. There was a breeze blowing through the clearing, causing the long, yellow grass to flutter, but as Ronon peered closer into the approaching cloud of dust, he noticed a different kind of movement.

Animals. Their fur was the exact same color as the grass and almost impossible to distinguish, but the pounding of their feet was getting louder and the cloud of dust and dirt they were kicking up was growing. The team broke out into a run, still at least a couple hundred yards from the trees. Despite Sheppard's and Beckett's assurance that his leg was fully healed, Ronon looked up to make sure his friend was moving as fast as the rest of them. Sheppard ran without a limp, glancing back occasionally to check on the progress of the animals and to make sure his team was still running with him. Teyla was only a few steps behind him.

Satisfied that Sheppard and Teyla were okay, Ronon turned his attention to McKay. The physicist was breathing hard, but he was running almost as fast as the rest of them. Ronon grabbed his arm as McKay stumbled a little and kept the man upright.

"….Think…it's a…stampede…" McKay shouted between deep, panting breaths. Ronon glanced back at the animals, noting how quickly they were catching up to the four of them.

He could hear their yells now—the bellowing cries of panicked animals. The pounding hooves were causing the ground beneath his feet to vibrate. Another glance behind him told him they were directly in these creatures' path.

They were larger than Ronon had first assumed, and he felt a surge of adrenaline course through him. They were less than fifty yards from the trees. He pumped his legs harder, keeping a hold of McKay and forcing the man to run faster. He glanced back and caught a glimpse of a large, manic black eye set in a rough, yellow furry face. Its mouth opened in a terrorized cry, it teeth white against the blood red color of its lips.

And then they were out of the fields and in the trees. The animals kept coming, the sound of their feet echoing strangely under the thick canopy of the forest. Ronon and McKay dived behind a large tree and buried themselves into the trunk. Ronon closed his eyes, breathing deeply and praying the tree would protect them from the stampeding force of those animals. He opened his eyes in sudden alarm, looking around for Teyla and Sheppard, but any sign of them was obscured by the hundreds of beasts that poured through the woods around them.

* * *

John remembered reaching the trees, looking around for his teammates and a place of safety, then a blur of yellow flashing passed him on his left, and then an explosion of pain. He had opened his mouth to cry out, but something slammed into his back, then his chest, then his back, then his chest, over and over again, rolling him along the uneven ground. His arms and legs flailed helplessly around him, and he could hear nothing beyond the thunderous stampede of animal hooves and the screaming pain encompassing his body.

.

.

.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the silence. He was laying on his back and staring up at sky that was much darker than he thought it should be. A twig from a nearby bush, with a single, perfectly shaped green leaf hung over his head. An animal moaned in the distance. He blinked halfway, but the energy required to open his eyes was suddenly too much, and he succumbed to the darkness.

.

.

.

It was a high-pitched twittering sound followed by something low and guttural and alien that brought John to full awareness again. The sky overhead was bright, and the leaf above his head was swaying slightly. He blinked his eyes a few times, trying to remember where he was and how he'd gotten here. The memory of the clearing, of his team racing toward the trees and the large, yellow animals stampeding behind them flashed through his mind.

He jerked his head up, intending to call out to Ronon, Teyla, and McKay, but sharp pain lancing through his head and chest stifled his cry. He moaned instead, curling onto his side. The pain that had been dormant when he'd first awoken wracked his body now, and John squeezed his eyes shut against wave after wave of onslaught. He could feel the tears of pain streaming through his closed eyes and down his face, and he coughed and gagged as he tried to keep himself from crying out.

The low, guttural sound was back, and closer. As the pain died down a little, John suddenly remembered the noises that had awoken him in the first place. He cracked open his eyes and gasped at the large, round face staring down at him. The alien had to be at least twelve feet tall. Its skin was sallow and pulled tightly across the bones, its face framed by a dozen brownish gray braids of hair.

The alien was poking John in the chest, and jerked back in surprise when it realized John was staring back at him. It took a step back, and John couldn't tell if it had a fur coat hanging on its tall, thin frame, or if it was some kind of fur-covered alien-animal. John scrambled backward, biting his lip against the wave of agony the movement brought. He reached for his gun, and noticed belatedly that his weapons, vest, and one boot were all missing.

_What the hell is going on?_ he thought. The alien was cautiously moving toward him again, reaching out a long bony finger. John reached around to the back of his belt and breathed a sigh of relief when his hand wrapped around the hilt of his knife.

As the alien made to poke him again, John slashed at its arms with the knife. The blade cut deeply through the skin, drawing black blood. At least he assumed it was blood. It looked more like oil, but it poured from the alien's arm, and the creature screeched out in pain, tucking its arm into its side. John tried to scramble away, but his body hardly reacted through the pain. He looked up as the alien advanced again, caught a flash of anger or fear in its wide eyes, and had just enough time to turn his head toward the large foot swinging toward his stomach before his body exploded in pain again.

He wasn't sure if he passed out or not. Sounds filtered around, but he didn't seem able to open his eyes and look around. His mind screamed at him, warning him of the danger, but his body betrayed him. He felt rough hands grabbing his arms and legs and wrapping a thick rope around them. The rope was tight—too tight.

Hands around his chest and stomach forced him to open his eyes again. He screamed, hoarse and choking, at the pain. Something was carrying him around the middle the same way he used to pick up his dog when he was a boy. His stomach and chest burned at the movement, and it was all he could do to keep pulling in oxygen. He caught glimpses of arms and legs too large to be human, of a yellow animal the same color as the ones that had been stampeding through the clearing, of something that looked like a large pick-up truck filled with sacks and boxes. The twittering, guttural sounds floated around him, and he realized it was the aliens—all of them huge—talking and yelling. The arm carrying him flung him into the back of the truck bed, and the last thing he saw was the bright blue sky of early morning overhead.

* * *

Ronon scanned the woods. They looked the same as they had the day before after narrowly escaping the "rampaging horde of rabid buffalo," as McKay had so aptly described it. McKay stepped up next to him, holding the useless life signs detector.

"This is the tree, right? Where we hid?" he asked, pointing toward the large tree that the two of them had ducked behind at the last minute, narrowly avoiding the animals.

Ronon nodded, remembering how the backs of the animals had disappeared into the trees almost as quickly as they'd appeared. The silence that had followed them had been unnerving. He shivered slightly.

"You okay?" McKay asked him.

"Yeah."

McKay looked around, once again out of breath. His face was flushed from the hike, and he shook the life signs detector in frustration. "We should have gotten back here faster. If only we could have brought a jumper," he mumbled.

Ronon nodded again. He hadn't spoken much since the animal stampede. He moved forward again, deeper into the woods, and spotted the fallen log that had saved Teyla's life. When neither Sheppard nor Teyla had responded to his or McKay's calls, Ronon had plunged into the woods searching for any sign of them. He'd discovered Teyla lying behind the log, unconscious with a nasty bruise on her forehead and an obviously broken wrist. McKay had been right behind him, and his face had turned white at the sight of Teyla. Ronon, seeing how close to the edge of panic McKay had been, had put the physicist in charge of caring for his teammate, and he had moved forward through the trees searching for Sheppard.

To no avail. Ronon stood once again on the edge of a steep hill that tumbled into a narrow valley about a hundred yards below him. The trees and brush grew thicker here, and the path of destruction caused by the animals left no evidence of Sheppard's presence. He bit his lip at the thought of Sheppard tumbling down the steep, rocky slope under the pounding hooves of animals.

A Marine detail spread out around him, and they began climbing carefully down the hill. Ronon flashed back to those first few moments after the stampede, to McKay bending over an unconscious and bleeding Teyla.

"Any sign of Sheppard?" McKay had asked, even though he'd heard the silence on the other end of Ronon's radio calls.

"Nothing yet," Ronon had answered. "How's Teyla?"

"Not good."

He'd searched for another twenty minutes, finding a smashed up P-90 and one of Sheppard's boots but no discernible path that would give him any clue as to where his friend had ended up. A few spots of blood on a rock had twisted his gut, but he'd reluctantly turned back to McKay and Teyla. They had decided that they needed to get Teyla back to Atlantis.

"Found something," Major Lorne yelled. Ronon picked his way through the thick brush along the steep hill. Lorne was squatting on the ground, holding up the remains of Sheppard's vest. It was torn to shreds.

Ronon screamed in frustration. "We shouldn't have left him."

"It was a tough choice," Lorne said. "Teyla was seriously wounded and there was no sign of him."

Ronon forced the muscles in his hands to loosen. He had the sudden urge to punch the nearest tree, but breaking his hand would not help them find Sheppard.

"What's the progress on the jumper?" he asked instead.

Lorne held up a finger, checking with the team at the gate. Ronon listened with growing frustration at their response. The trees growing over the small area of the gate were thick, and cutting them down was a slow process. It would be days before they'd be able to create a hole large enough for a jumper to slip through.

"_Got something," _one of the Marine sergeants called out over the radio, interrupting the radio report.

Lorne and Ronon half-walked, half-ran down the hill, careful not to twist their ankles. The sergeant stood at the bottom of the hill. The narrow valley opened up on either side of him. In his hand, he held a knife covered in something black and crusted over.

"Standard issue," he replied, handing it to Ronon.

"Sheppard's," Ronon breathed. He took a few steps to the left, staring hard at the ground. There seemed to be a wide path of some kind through the center of valley floor.

"Another boot." Lorne, who had turned right when Ronon had turned left, held up the shoe. "It's got to be Sheppard's, but which way did he go?"

Ronon stared hard at the path, then the boot and the knife in his hand. The ground in the valley was covered in footprints in both directions, similar in size and shape to the animals that had stampeded past them through the woods. Any clue as to which way Sheppard had turned was gone. Ronon's hand squeezed around the handle of the knife.

_Damn that rampaging horde of rabid buffalo._

TBC…


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

John woke up coughing and gagging when a stream of lukewarm water hit him in the face. He moved his head to get out of the water's path, but it seemed to follow him. He coughed again as some of the water ran down his throat, squirming and then panicking when he realized he was pinned down to a hard, cold surface. He bucked his body against the restraints and felt them tighten around his arms and legs. Hands. Someone was holding him down.

And then the water was gone. Someone flipped him over onto his stomach like he weighed nothing, and he felt the jet of water hitting the back of his head, then his neck, then his back. _He was being hosed down,_ he realized. Images of the truck, the yellow animals, and the tall, giant-sized aliens floated through his memory. He flailed his arms and legs again, remembering that they'd been tied together before but now were not.

His eyes flew open at the sensation of more hands pinning him down on the table. He had been flipped onto his back without noticing it, and now he panicked at the sight of four large aliens, one with a hose, leaning over him and keeping him as still as possible against the table. They all wore the same fur-covered clothing—if it was clothing and not just thick, furry skin—and long, twisted ropes of hair framed their faces. The one with the hose continued to spray him and they chattered to each other incomprehensibly.

John squirmed under their grasp. The alien with the hose disappeared, and John sucked in deep, water-free breaths. His chest and head were throbbing, and he shivered against the cool breeze hitting his skin. His shirt and pants were sodden with water, and he wondered why they'd bothered to hose him off with his clothes still on.

The sudden thought of being stripped naked by these strange aliens made him shudder, and the aliens gripped his arms and legs harder at the movement. "What the hell do you want with me?" he yelled.

The aliens turned their heads at the sound, peering down at him in curiosity. They chattered to each other some more and looked at the alien that had held the hose as it stepped up to the table again. John stared back, defiant. It almost had a feminine look, but he couldn't figure out what exactly made it feminine. He tried to put on his most intimidating look, but he was shaking with fear and adrenaline. The others had quieted down and seemed to be deferring to the female alien.

The leader pressed one of its large hands into John's stomach, and John bit his lip to keep from crying out in pain. The hand was big enough to cover almost his entire stomach. It pressed harder, and a sharp, stabbing pain shot through him. John whimpered against the pain. The alien moved its hand, pressing its long fingers into his gut at different points.

It hit a particularly sensitive spot and he screamed, arching his back as he struggled to get away from those probing fingers. The hand jerked away at his reaction, however, and John breathed heavily in relief as the pain died down a little, but his relief was short-lived. His stomach still throbbed in agonizing waves. The alien had moved to his legs, running its fingers down each limb and pressing into the muscles, knees, calves, ankles, and feet.

_It's examining me for injuries, like Beckett might only much less gentle, _he realized. He closed his eyes against the pounding headache in his temples, exhausted and stressed, and he hardly reacted to a sharp, momentary stab in his thigh. _They shot me up with something. Some kind of sedative, _he thought, and his eyes grew heavy almost immediately. The hands pinning him down loosened their grip as his muscles relaxed, and John thought this was his moment to escape, but he had no energy to move.

Suddenly, one of the aliens scooped him up in its arms. John's eyes flew open, but the rest of his body was dead weight. He saw the reddish-blond coat and realized it was the female doctor. The alien held him close to its chest, and John realized they were walking through a sterile-looking hallway. He tried to move his head to look around, but his heavy, lethargic muscles reacted only slightly. He caught a glimpse of two aliens walking toward him. One of them held its bandaged forearm close to its chest and glared back at John, and for a moment John thought he recognized the long, sallow face.

They passed through a wide doorway, and the alien holding John paused a moment to speak to someone sitting behind a glass desk. He felt childish almost, cradled in the alien's arms like a five year old. If he'd been standing, the top of his head probably would have barely reached the waists of all the aliens he'd seen so far.

They were moving again, and then the alien was ducking down and setting John on the ground. John opened heavy eyes to look around, and saw an open door, but he had no energy to move. He lay where he had been set, and watched the alien back out of the barred door. He jerked a little at the sound of it clanging shut and watched the alien fumble at the lock with a set of keys.

A cage. He was in a cage. The blanket underneath him—a strip of soft leather—was thin, offering little protection or cushion from the cold, cement floor. He spotted two bowls near the door and a small box in the corner. Not just a cage. He was in a kennel, like an animal. He shivered slightly against the cold seeping into him and prayed his team would find him soon.

* * *

At some point, he must have drifted off to sleep. The sound of keys in the metal door of the cage woke him up abruptly, and John jerked his head at the sound. Two aliens were opening the door, and ducking into the little cage. Their hair—one jet black, the other a dark brown—looked like thick braided ropes that swung around their shoulders as they moved. Their fur or coats matched the color of their hair. They were large enough that they could hardly move around in the cage, and they squatted down as they approached him.

John scooted back with a cry and slammed his back into the wall, grateful that the sedative he'd been given had obviously worn off. The aliens nearing him paused in their approach, their wide, unblinking eyes trained on John's quaking form. They held their hands open, and moved forward slowly. John inched back, squeezing himself into the corner and looking for something he could use to fight back with. Besides making him shaky, the drugs they had injected him with were making him nauseous, and his stomach churned and coiled against the acid.

The aliens were almost human looking—just too tall and thin. Relatively speaking, John was about the size of a small child. He could use that. Being smaller, he might be able to find places to hide that they wouldn't be able to reach. He tried to scoot along the side wall, but the aliens were blocking him from both sides.

Quicker than he would have guessed, one of them jumped at him and grabbed him by the foot. John screamed, lashing out with his arms as the other alien made a move for him. He felt a sharp pain in the toe of his free foot as it connected with one of the black-haired one's face. It dropped John's foot, and John spun around, kicking at both of them as much as he could. He connected a few times, enough to make them step back.

He was breathing heavily, and he knew he'd only managed to delay the inevitable, but he breathed a sigh of relief as the brown-haired alien backed out of the cage holding its nose. Black blood ran down its face and onto the weird, furry clothes. They almost looked like they were covered in small dreadlocks. John's breath hitched for a second at that thought. He'd give anything to see Ronon's dreadlocks right about now.

The aliens spoke to each other, the bizarre combination of clicks and sounds and guttural grunting he had heard before. He flashed on the alien whose arm he had slashed with his knife in the woods, and realized it was the same alien he'd seen last night with its arm all bandaged up. _Probably testing it for rabies or something,_ John thought, grinning and feeling slightly hysterical.

The alien with the bloody nose disappeared for a second, only to return with a long metal bar. There was a two-pronged fork attached to one end of it, and John shrank back against the wall. His previous moment of giddiness was gone as the alien still in the cage grabbed the bar and began approaching its captive.

"Get the hell away from me you—"

The alien jabbed him with the forked end of the bar, cutting John off mid-sentence. Blinding pain sliced through John's side where the forked end had hit him. The pain was all-consuming, whiting out the cage and the aliens for a few seconds. When it finally abated, he found himself lying on the floor on his stomach, breathing heavily.

He turned his head toward the door. The black-haired alien with the metal bar hadn't moved, and was staring at him without expression. There was a glint of something in its eyes—malice or anger—and its hand tightened around the metal bar. John tried to move, but his body felt sluggish and unresponsive. He managed to push himself up on shaky arms, and caught a glimpse of the being swinging the bar at him again.

The forked end caught him in the middle of the back. John screamed, arching away from the tip of the bar, but the alien pressed the end of it harder into his skin. The pain increased, shooting like lightning bolts up and down his body.

John wasn't sure when it stopped. It couldn't have been long, but the next thing he was aware of was lying on the cold floor, shaking and twitching uncontrollably. The alien with the bar—an electric cattle prod, his brain belatedly filled in—was still squatting near the door, just out of reach, but he had handed the electric prod back to the brown-haired, bloody-nosed alien. He crawled forward slowly, as if afraid John would suddenly lash out at him, but John could do nothing more than watch him through half-closed eyes.

The alien must have decided that John was no longer a threat to him. It grabbed him roughly around the waist. John felt himself being dragged across the floor, then lifted up. It held him with one arm around the waist, and John's arms and legs dangled uselessly in front of him. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open and watch the tiled floor pass by him as they walked down the hallway. The alien's arm pressed painfully into his stomach.

They walked into a room, and John caught glimpses of counters and bare tabletops and instruments. The alien flipped him up onto the top of one of the tables, and John bounced slightly as he hit the surface. His head exploded in pain, and he curled into himself, groaning.

Above his head, he could hear the guttural grunting language again. It was rapid and loud, and John would have guessed that both parties were angry at one another, but about what, he couldn't even begin to guess. He squeezed his arms around his legs, curling into the smallest ball possible. If the pain could just abate a little bit, then maybe he could slide off the edge of the table, hide out while the two arguing aliens were distracted.

_Move move move, _he screamed at himself, but his body was locked up in a ball and he stayed frozen on the table, shaking against the pain still shooting sporadically through his limbs. The two aliens were still arguing. One of the voices was a little higher pitched, and John wondered if it was the female alien with the water hose from the day before.

His stomach picked that moment to rebel, spurring the movement to the edge of the table he'd been trying to talk himself into before. He gagged and retched over the side of the table, causing the argument over his head to stop abruptly as the two skittered back away from the table. The gagging didn't last long since there was very little in his stomach to bring up in the first place. He pressed a fist into his sore gut and rested his forehead against the cold metal of the table.

Warm hands were on his back and shoulders, pulling him back toward the center of the table, but John just shuddered. He felt washed out and achy, amazed he was still conscious considering what his body had been through during the last day or two. He realized the room was silent, and he was alone with one of the aliens.

It rolled him onto his back, and John was too tired to resist as it unfolded his arms and legs and stretched him out. He shivered as the cold metal of the table seeped through his back. He blinked and a slightly feminine alien face came into focus. It was the same alien he'd "met" the day before, and it once again ran its hands over his body, pressing into his chest and stomach, squeezing his arms and legs, running its fingers through his hair. It was gentler this time, maybe because John was so subdued. He whimpered when it hit a particularly tender spot but he had no energy to do more than that. The alien rolled him onto his side, pressing its hands into his back and neck before returning him to his back.

John was tired enough to fall asleep, but the lingering stabbing aches throughout his body kept him on the edge of consciousness. He lay there listlessly as the female alien manipulated his arms and legs, but when it pressed its fingers into a particularly tender point on the side of his stomach, he grunted in pain and tried to roll away.

"Leave me alone, you freaky-assed alien," he slurred. It grabbed him, rolling him gently and with ease back onto the center of the table. John blinked up at it, but then it disappeared to the far side of the room. A second later, the alien was rolling some equipment toward him, then manipulating him again into different positions before stepping back and staring at the side of the machine.

_X-rays? _he wondered. He stayed still while the being examined him. He still had on his t-shirt and pants, which he thought was a little strange, but he had no intention of saying anything. Unlike the aliens that had ripped him out of his cage, this one was gentle, almost caring.

The doctor finally seemed satisfied with the pictures or X-rays or whatever it was doing. John blinked, fighting to keep his eyes open as he watched it roll the machine back to the corner of the room. He willed himself to stay conscious and focus on his own aches and pains. His head hurt, but he couldn't tell if he had a concussion or not. His cheek felt hot and swollen, so he was pretty sure he had a nice, ugly bruise spreading across half of his face. His stomach hurt, especially the left side—something he would have to keep an eye on. His shoulder was stiff and bruised, as was his hip and one of his toes, but he didn't think he'd broken anything. His chest felt heavy as well, but there had been no sharp stabs of pain when he moved or breathed deeply. Maybe, just maybe, he'd get out of this with minimal injuries.

The alien doctor returned, staring down at him with something almost like compassion. Its long fingertips brushed his hair then the side of his face, passing lightly over the bruise on his cheek. John was torn between panicking and being soothed by its action, and finally decided that panicking required energy he just didn't have. His mouth was sour and nasty, and he swallowed, suddenly dying of thirst.

Jane, which seemed like a better name than "that alien woman doctor," gathered John up in her arms, and once again he was reduced to the status of a five year old. One of his arms hung loose and flopped as she walked, pulling painfully on the bruises around his shoulder, but he couldn't seem to pick his arm up and move it across his body.

He saw another alien moving out of the corner of his eye and tensed slightly, but Jane tightened her grip on him and held him closer to herself, almost protectively. Her actions pressed his face into her arm and he got a mouthful of the shaggy, reddish-blond fur-like clothing. He wondered again if it was a coat or cloak that they all wore or if it was actually fur. He had never seen anything like it. It could explain why they hadn't taken his clothes—maybe they didn't recognize them as clothes that could be removed in the first place.

He heard the sound of keys in a metal door and knew he was back at his cage. Jane stooped down, lowering John to the floor and onto the thin leather blanket. She didn't linger, but backed out quickly and locked the cage door.

John rolled to the side and watched her leave. The three walls around him were solid, but the wall at the front with the door was made entirely of bars, giving him a limited view of the room the cage was in. He looked around now from his position on the floor. The ceiling was high—he couldn't see the top from where he was now—and other cages lined the walls across from him. It was quiet at the moment, and he wondered if there was anyone else in here with him. He'd take either animal or human, just as long as he wasn't the only experimental specimen in this place.

Exhaustion dragged at him, but his body was screaming for water. He spotted the two bowls still sitting near the front of the cage. He pulled himself to his knees and crawled over. One of the bowls was filled with water, which he guzzled down. The other was filled with chunks of raw, fatty meat. The sight alone turned John's stomach and he looked away quickly, breathing through his mouth. The water sloshed uncomfortably in his stomach. He glanced once more around the room outside his cage, but he was alone for the moment. His eyes were starting to droop closed and it was getting harder and harder to focus on anything. He crawled back on shaky hands and knees to his blanket, collapsing in the corner and falling fast asleep.

TBC…


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter 4_

John woke up sometime in the middle of the night, stiff and sore. The room outside the cage was dark, but there was a light on in one corner and a rhythmic tapping sound that seemed to be coming from it. He crawled forward cautiously, acutely aware of the bruises covering his body, and pressed his head against the bars. He could just see the lamp sitting on the edge of a desk. Someone was tapping a pen against it, but he couldn't see who. He got an occasional glimpse of a hand moving, then the soft sound of a pen hitting a hard surface.

He crawled back to his corner. He'd woken up for a very pressing reason and wished now that he hadn't drank the entire bowl of water. He eyed the box in the other corner of the room, wondering if that was what it was for.

"Ah, screw it," he mumbled. He crawled toward the box, noting that it was filled with gravelly sand.

_A litter box. They gave me a damn litter box. _His face flushed in anger and humiliation, and he took a deep breath to calm himself down. He moved back to the front of the cage, double checking that the pen tapper was still at his desk. He was, so John quietly scooted back toward the box. Thankfully, the room was mostly dark, and he could almost convince himself that he had some privacy in the shadows.

Keeping a careful ear on the tapping from the desk, John stood as far back in the corner as he could and took care of business. The last thing he wanted was an audience. He sighed in relief as he finished up and the pen tapper at the desk didn't notice. He crawled back to the other corner and lowered himself gently to the floor, wrapping the thin blanket over his shoulders.

* * *

John went from dead asleep to wide awake. He opened his eyes to a bright room, the ceiling of the cage white and bare over his head. He turned his head at a sound off to his left and realized it had been his cage door opening that had woken him up.

He sat up quickly, stifling a groan at the achy stiffness throughout his body. The black-haired alien—his friend from the day before—came at him quickly with the electric cattle prod before he had a chance do anything else. The alien jammed the thing in his side without hesitation, and John screamed at the sudden pain that consumed him.

"Go to hell, Pavlov," he rasped, bucking away from the prod. The being looked down at him, tilting his head slightly as if trying to understand the sounds John was making. John glared back at him and caught the gleam of satisfaction in the alien's eyes as he deliberately jammed the prod into John's leg.

Anger surged through John's body, almost as strong as the pain. He screamed again, jerking toward the wall and kicking his legs away from the cattle prod. Pavlov pulled the prod away, and John used the momentary respite to flip onto his knees. Before he could move any further, the alien jabbed him again in the side.

John collapsed on the floor, screaming again. Tears streamed down his face, but he grit his teeth. Anger was good; he could use anger. His body was shaking, but as soon as Pavlov pulled his toy away, John pushed himself up to his knees and launched himself at the alien.

He had no plan, other than to get that electric prod away from the alien's hands. Pavlov stumbled backward, surprised at John's sudden attack, dropping the electric prod at his feet. John, seeing the cause of his misery now at his captor's feet, changed direction, making a lunge for the bar. He could hear the aliens yelling around him, but he zoned them out and focused on getting his hand on the weapon.

His fingers had just brushed the metal of the prod when Pavlov seemed to figure out what John was trying to do. John was strong and quick, but the alien was stronger and had the advantage of size. He half-shoved, half-picked John up and threw him away from the electric prod.

John hit the wall and slid to the floor in a dazed shock. His head was ringing and he gasped as he tried to catch his breath. Pavlov had grabbed the cattle prod and was heading toward him again, his large body moving awkwardly in the small space but still looking intimidating. John rolled to his hands and knees getting ready to fight again and bracing himself for the jolt of electricity.

Except it never came. He glanced up at Pavlov just as the alien swung the bar down across John's back. John grunted, too shocked to scream, and fell to the ground. The pain exploded through his back, and for a moment he thought he was going to throw up. The bowl of raw meat had tipped over near his head, and the blood that had pooled in the bottom of the bowl was now running into his face. The meat was rotting, and the stench made John's stomach clench. He lifted his head to get away from the smell, but Pavlov, apparently, interpreted his movement as something else entirely. Not convinced that John was no longer a danger, he smacked the smaller man hard with the bar two more times.

John's back went from agonizingly painful to numb in half a second, and his breath caught in his throat. Through the haze, one thought broke through—_He broke my back. That bastard broke my back._ His chest was burning as well, and he realized he'd been holding his breath. He gasped, and Pavlov yanked on John's arm, almost pulling it out of its socket.

The movement, however, woke up the pain in his back, and John screamed as he was dragged out of the cage. The aliens were yelling again, and more feet pounded into the room, but the only thing John could focus on was the pain—waves and waves of pain, as if every bone in his back had been crushed.

Either Pavlov got tired of John's screaming or enraged by the argument he was now having with the brown-haired alien and an older looking alien who had been sitting at the desk. Through the noise and chaos, John heard a whish of air as something was whipped downward, and then his back exploded into more pain than he would have thought possible. His screams turned to gagging as his stomach bucked, and the last thing he saw was Pavlov's strong, thin hands grabbing him by the armpits and jerking him upward.

* * *

John opened his eyes slowly. His head was throbbing, his throat felt raw, and he was having trouble focusing. There was a light far away over his head. _The sun?_ He squinted at it, wondering where he was. It coalesced slowly, and after a few more blinks, he recognized it as a round lamp.

So he was inside. He took a deep breath and tried to turn his head, but nothing happened. Through the headache he could feel something pressing against his forehead, holding it in place. He tried to lift his hands to feel it, but those too were immobile. Straps pulled at his wrists. He was tied down.

John's heartbeat quickened. He tried to kick his legs, but straps around his ankles and across his thighs prevented any movement. There was another strap across his chest, and the harder he breathed, the tighter the strap felt. He squirmed and pulled at the bindings, but whoever had him tied down had obviously known what they were doing.

After a few minutes, he gave up. The straps, if anything, felt tighter, not looser, and his back—pressed against the hard surface of the table—throbbed. He felt like he had shards of glass just under his skin grating against raw nerves. He tried to look around the room as much as possible without moving his head, and he recognized the lab he had been in before. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a distant movement, and wondered if it was the doctor, Jane. If it was Pavlov, he was dead.

He breathed deeply, focusing on bringing his heart rate down. At some point, they'd have to untie him, and he needed to be ready for it. He looked around the room as best as he could, locating the door. Counters lined the walls, and he was reminded vaguely of McKay's lab. The scale was about twice as big in every dimension as he was used to, though. It was almost surreal.

More movement out of the corner of his eye indicated that whoever had been in the corner was coming toward him. John shifted a little bit, grimacing at the pain in his back. He forced his muscles to relax and his eyes to close halfway. If they still thought he was either unconscious or only semi-conscious, they could get lax, giving him an opportunity to escape.

Through half-open eyes, he saw Jane walk up to the table. She peered down at him a moment before running her fingers over his throat and pressing into the muscles around his neck. He forced himself to not tense up at her examination, but when she pried his eyes open and flashed a light in them, he couldn't help but flinch. Her fingers moved to the side of his face, brushing the skin lightly. John tensed again, then recognized she was trying to soothe him. Actually, she was petting him, but he forced himself to concentrate on escaping.

Jane pried his mouth open next, running her fingers along his teeth. It was all he could do not to bite her. When she stuck her finger partway down his throat, however, he gagged then coughed, clenching his jaw. Jane yelped, pulling her hand back quickly. John watched her rub her finger where he'd bitten down, and part of him wished he'd bitten harder. The nerves in his throat were on fire.

Jane moved back to the far end of the room where she'd been standing before, almost out of sight. John caught a glimpse of her moving, as if she was collecting things strewn across the countertop, and then she returned, pushing a cart on wheels toward him. The top of it was filled with unidentifiable instruments, and John's heart thudded in his chest.

Jane seemed ignorant of his distress. She spoke softly to herself in her own language as she arranged things on the cart. She lifted something that looked like a piece of paper or heavy cloth material covered in slime, shook it slightly as stuff dripped into the bucket then laid it over John's stomach. His shirt was instantly soaked through with the slimy, viscous liquid, and it seeped quickly to his skin. He shivered—the slime was icy cold.

Jane petted him again, brushing the hair back from his head, and continued to talk. John wondered if she was talking to him, saying things to calm him down. The slime covered material on his stomach was heavy. Jane was digging through the materials on her cart, and pulled out a piece of equipment connected by wires to something behind John's head. She pressed the machine in her hand into his slime covered stomach but studied whatever it was connected to behind him.

"I'm not pregnant—" John started to say, but the attempt reignited the fire in his throat and only a raspy, unintelligible sound came out. Jane paused, looking down at him curiously, then continued with her ministrations.

She pressed a button, and John heard a popping sound. He sucked in at the sudden sensation of being hit with a spurt of air, but relaxed when it didn't hurt. Jane moved her handheld device and pressed the button again, shooting another puff of air at his stomach. She hardly looked at John but continued almost rhythmically in the same pattern across his stomach. She then moved the slimy cloth up to his chest and started over again.

It took hours as Jane repeated the procedure on every part of his body. John was half asleep for most of it, worn out after his fight with Pavlov and lulled by Jane's gentle touch. He hardly noticed when she left, taking the cart of equipment with her. It wasn't until he was hit with a face full of warm water that he jerked awake. Jane stood over him with the hose again, washing the slime off his clothes and skin.

He twisted as much as he could, but the straps around his body still had him pinned down. Jane moved quickly, using a cloth to scrub him. She undid the straps and John immediately rolled away from her, but hands grabbed at his arms and pinned him in place. A jet of warm hair hit him in the back, and he felt Jane scrubbing at his t-shirt.

A soft gasp above his head had him twisting around to look up at Jane. She rolled him back onto the table and ran her hands across his chest and stomach in wonder.

"What the hell?" he grunted.

Jane's hand wrapped around the fabric of his shirt and pulled it up, revealing his pale, bruised stomach. He pulled at the shirt, trying to pry the fabric out of Jane's hands, but Jane was consumed with curiosity. She flipped him onto his stomach, and John cried out in pain at the sudden movement. With all her gentleness, he'd forgotten how strong she actually was.

She pulled at his shirt, finally ripping it, and then probed his bare skin with her fingertips. John struggled, twisting away from her as much as she could, but Jane quickly peeled his t-shirt off. She lifted the fabric, now torn to shreds, and studied it in wonder. John rolled away again, just reaching the edge of the table when Jane noticed him and yanked him back.

_So they hadn't known about the clothing._ John was soaking wet, but his shivering was caused by something else entirely. Jane began pulling at the fabric of his pants. She must have realized that the fabric was strong, because she turned away from John and began digging through a nearby drawer.

John sat up, grimacing at the pain this reawakened in his muscles. He'd managed to ignore his back, but squirming on the table had caused the bruises to start throbbing again and sitting up had made it ten times worse. He could feel bile rising in his throat, but he swallowed it down.

He slid toward the end of the table and had his legs hanging over the edge when Jane turned around. She squawked and lunged at him, a knife in one hand. John tried to jump to the ground, but Jane caught his arm and flipped back onto the table. He landed hard on his back and screamed in pain.

Before he even realized what had happened, Jane had slit one of his pant legs and was carefully prodding the skin underneath. He grabbed at her hands, but she lifted him up and pulled the remains of his pants off. John switched tactics, and instead of swinging his fist toward Jane, he made a desperate grab for his boxers. There was no way he was letting her take those, but even as the thought crossed his mind, he wondered how much of a fight he would be able to put up. His body was shaking from exhaustion.

Jane was examining the pants and John looked toward the open lab door and the hallway outside. He was hungry and thirsty, and now he'd been stripped of almost all his clothes. He curled up into a ball as he began shaking harder. He held onto the elastic band of his boxers with all of his remaining strength.

Jane eventually pulled at his boxers, but John squirmed and whimpered and kicked and shook and yelled and curled tighter into himself, and in the end, she threw her hands in the air and turned away. She set his torn up clothing on the counter, then began rummaging through the cupboards.

_What was she doing? _he thought. His body was screaming with pain and exhaustion and all he wanted to do was sink into oblivion. Jane returned moments later holding a large needle. John turned pleading eyes to her and whimpered when she turned the pointy end toward him, but even if he'd been able to communicate with her, he doubted he could have gotten any sound out of his aching throat.

_Please let this not be real. Please let me wake up._

Jane jabbed him in the leg with the needle, and John arched his back against the sharp stinging pain. He opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was a hoarse, agonizing rush of air. Immediately, his vision began to swim, the lights above his head swirling around Jane's face. As the muscles in his body loosened, he waited for her to uncurl him and finally rip off his boxers—his last remaining dignity.

And yet she didn't, but John was too dazed to contemplate why. He was vaguely aware of being lifted into Jane's arms. He had no control over any of his muscles. His vision grayed at the edges, and John waited for darkness to overtake him, but it didn't. His eyes wouldn't close, and he stared at the blurry walls that passed by as Jane carried him through the facility. He could feel that his mouth was slightly open, and water from his hair dripped across his face and onto his dry, chapped lips.

His body felt numb and paralyzed, the aches and pains muted save for the spot on his leg where she'd injected him. That spot burned enough to make John want to squirm and wiggle in Jane's arms.

He could see a little bit of the hallway behind him, so was the first to notice Pavlov and his friend coming toward them. He tried to move or yell, but managed only to swallow. He stared at Pavlov's wide, flat alien face, the eyebrows scrunched together in a frown. Pavlov was moving his mouth, but the voice sounded distant and muffled to John, like he was underwater. Whatever he was saying, however, caught Jane's attention, and she spun around quickly.

If John could have tensed he would have. All he could do, however, was wait for whatever Pavlov inflicted on him this time. He could hear Jane talking back, and from the tenseness in her arms as she squeezed John to her body, they were obviously arguing.

_Maybe she's angry about that cattle prod,_ John thought. Jane spun back around, walking briskly down the hallway and leaving Pavlov and the other alien standing in the hallway behind them. She shifted her arms, lifting John up so that his head rested on her shoulder. His arms were crossed in front of him, and his legs dangled under Jane's arms. She was carrying him like a baby or a small child, and he felt his face burn red with humiliation.

TBC…


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter 5_

The drug wore off slowly. Jane returned him to his cage, talking quietly into his ear while rubbing the swollen bruises on his back all the way. Her intentions may have been to assure John, but by the time they reached the room with the cages, his back was once again throbbing. Unable to move away from her hands or cry out to let her know she was hurting him, John sunk like a deadweight in her arms. He couldn't even grit his teeth or breathe through the pain. Jane opened up his cage and set him carefully on the small blanket before petting his face and leaving.

Exhaustion finally won out, and John drifted off to sleep. When he woke up a few hours later, the room was quiet. His back spasmed as he twisted onto his side, and he lay still for a few seconds breathing deeply and riding out the waves of pain. His stomach ached abominably, and John tried to calculate how long it had been since he'd eaten anything. Two days, three days, longer? He wasn't sure. He rubbed his face, feeling the thick stubble of growth on his chin. _At least three days, _he thought.

When he thought he could move again, he pushed himself up to his knees and crawled over to the two bowls set dutifully near the cage door. He drank about half the water, then eyed the other bowl. The raw meat was gone; they'd obviously decided that wasn't in his diet. In its place was a bowl of leaves. It almost looked like dried-out lettuce, and John fingered it carefully. Under the leaves was a pile of grass clippings. He lifted the bowl to his face and sniffed it, but it smelled exactly the way he expected—like grass and leaves.

His gut twisting painfully ultimately made the final decision for him. He was starving and he needed food. The leaves were a far better option than the chunks of raw meat, so he sampled a few on top. They were bitter and hard to chew, and he almost gagged, but he forced himself to swallow them. Without food, he wouldn't have the strength to fight or run when the opportunity to escape presented itself. He grabbed a handful of the grass and used the remaining water to wash it down. The bowl was still at least half full of leaves, but John pushed it away. He'd eaten as much as he could of the bitter stuff.

After a quick check to make sure the room was empty, he relieved himself in the litter box again, then crawled over to his blanket. He was still exhausted to the point of shakiness. It seemed like that was all he had done since he'd been captured: unconscious or asleep, or awake and feeling like he hadn't slept in weeks. He stared at the ceiling and tried to take stock of his injuries.

As near as John could tell, he'd lost his team three or four days earlier in the animal stampede. He shuddered a little at the thought of his team. He had no idea if they'd survived the animals or been captured like him or escaped. He hadn't seen or heard a single sign of them since waking up captured, though, so he took that as a positive. He'd had water and now a little bit of food too—another positive.

His worst injuries were now the bruises on his back—thanks to Pavlov. He looked down at his wrists. They were red where he'd pulled at the straps, but the skin was not broken. He imagined the redness would fade pretty quickly. He pressed his hands into his stomach, like Jane had. Dark bruises tinged in yellow covered both his gut and chest. They were sore but not the stabbing pain he'd experienced the first day. His chest, hip, and shoulder were stiff, sore, and colorfully bruised as well, but they were also not as bad as they'd been the first day.

That left the unknown drugs he'd been shot up with and the aftereffects of the cattle prod. The longer it took him to either escape or be rescued, the worse off he'd be, but he figured that assuming he received the same treatment as he had so far, he had at least a few more days where he'd be in shape enough to realistically stage an escape.

He sighed, feeling the pull of sleep. His eyes were drooping closed despite his attempts to stay awake, and he finally gave into it. If he was going to escape, he'd need to be focused and alert when the time came. Most of all, he'd need his strength.

* * *

John woke up groaning, his hands automatically reaching for his stomach. He twisted on the ground at the sudden, sharp cramps before he was even fully awake. The dark room came into focus around him. It was night again, and the only light was the desk lamp at the end of the room around the corner from his cage. He wondered how long he'd been asleep. Another cramp ripped through his gut, taking his breath away, and he curled into himself. He pressed his fist into his stomach, as if he could hold back the flood of pain.

_Oh God, what's wrong now? _John thought. It had to be the leaves. That was the only thing he'd eaten since arriving. The nausea was starting to build as well, and he pulled his knees up to his chest. He was panting, and he could feel the drops of sweat pouring off his face.

His stomach twisted again, and he cried out through clenched teeth. He dragged himself over to the litter box, having just enough coordination to push himself along the floor. He kept one fist pressed into his stomach, willing himself to not throw up too soon.

He started gagging almost as soon as he reached the edge of the box. He held himself up on shaky arms as he retched. Pieces of dark green, undigested leaves splattered onto the gravelly sand, causing his stomach to buck and clench even more. He hadn't eaten much, so there wasn't much to throw up, but his body continued to convulse in dry heaves long after he'd thrown up every leaf and ounce of liquid in his stomach.

Sweat poured down his face and into his eyes. He gasped in air as his stomach seemed to settle down, resting his shoulder against the edge of the litter box in exhaustion and letting his head hang limply over the sand. The cramps in his stomach continued to wrack his body, but their intensity had died down a little—not quite taking his breath away. John heard the clanking of keys and the door of the cage opening up, but he could barely open his eyes, let alone lift his head to see who was coming in.

Large rough hands wrapped around John's chest, lifting him away from the litter box. A hand on his forehead raised his head enough for him to glance around his cage through slitted eyes. He saw the older alien, the one that usually sat at the desk and tapped his pen. His fur/coat thing was gray and mottled with darker, uneven spots, and his hands were wrinkled and dry.

He lifted John up and held a bowl of water in front of his face. John's mouth was dry and sour tasting, but he couldn't make his arms move to hold the bowl. The old alien lifted the bowl higher, tilting it so that John's entire face was in the water.

John sucked in as much water as he could, but the old alien seemed to have trouble holding both him and the bowl. He moved around, causing John to suck in both air and water. Eventually, John breathed when he should have sucked, and the water tumbling down his windpipe seized in his chest. He started coughing, which quickly turned to gagging, and he threw up all the water he'd managed to drink.

The old alien held him over the litter box as he heaved, making sounds John could only interpret as being noises of disgust. The vomiting had caused John's stomach to cramp up again, and he shook from the pain of it. When he finally stopped, he felt completely washed out. He tried to lift his head, to turn away from the sight of the half-digested leaves and bile seeping into the sand. The smell alone was making him nauseous again.

The old alien evidently decided John was done throwing up, and he began to back out of the cage. He held John securely against his chest as he stood up. John moaned as another cramp ripped through his gut. His arms and legs dangled toward the floor, swinging slightly as he was carried through the hallways.

His shirt was soaked completely through with sweat, and he shivered, feeling hot and chilled at the same time. The painful bruises on his back had taken a back seat to the demands for attention from his stomach, but now they were screaming just as loudly.

The old alien turned into a room, setting John down on a table. John cracked his eyes open, looking around enough to know he had not been brought to Jane's lab. This room was smaller with fewer countertops but more cupboards along the walls. The old alien went to one of those cupboards now, pulling out bottles.

A few moments later, he was lifting John up to a sitting position and holding the sick man steady with one arm around his chest. John leaned back against the old alien's stomach, its fur-like coat or skin softer than anything he had lain on in days. His stomach cramped up again, and he tried to curl into himself or pull his legs up, but his body shook with weakness. His eyes closed of their own will, and he felt himself sliding toward unconsciousness.

A hand around John's face forced his jaw open and something was roughly shoved into his mouth. He jolted awake, the surge of adrenaline giving him just enough strength to flail his arms. The old alien's arm tightened around his chest in response. John looked down at the largest syringe he had ever seen being held in his mouth by the old alien's rough, wrinkled hand.

His heart began to beat at a frantic pace, but then his tongue found the end of the syringe and no pointy needle. The alien squeezed on the end of the non-needle syringe, squirting the liquid it contained into John's mouth and down his throat. It looked like nothing more than water, but it was cold and burned all the way down his throat and into his stomach. John squirmed in the old alien's arms, and even tried to spit out whatever he'd been given when the syringe was yanked out of his mouth, but the alien cupped his weathered hand over John's mouth, forcing John to swallow.

John struggled against both the alien holding him and the cramps in his stomach, but his actions became increasingly weaker. The old alien removed his hand from John's mouth just as black spots began to dance around his vision from lack of oxygen, and John gulped in air. He was cold again. The arm around his chest loosened as John relaxed. The alien was not exactly gentle, but he didn't seem intent on hurting him—at least not immediately. The pain in his gut was fading as well.

The door to the lab flew open, and Jane ran into the lab. Her face was etched with worry and fear, and she spoke rapidly to the old alien holding John upright. John shuddered in relief.

_I must be pretty messed up if I'm happy to see her, _he thought. She seemed to be firing rapid questions at the old alien, which he answered back slowly and calmly. He laid John down on the table, and Jane helped stretch him out. Her face came into view overhead as she petted the side of his face. She was speaking to him now, but he stared back at her listlessly.

Jane pressed her fingers into his stomach, causing John to whimper and groan. The old alien, in the meantime, was setting something up near his head that vaguely resembled an IV bag full of something thick and dark brown. Jane rubbed John's face with both hands, massaging his cheeks and forehead with her thumbs, as the old alien rolled another piece of equipment that looked like a tabletop over most of his chest and stomach.

Jane paused in her massage and held John's face in her hands. She spoke to him again softly. Her eyes were wide, almost sad looking. She looked up at the old alien, and then they switched places, and John felt rough hands grab his head, pulling it back uncomfortably far and holding it firmly in place against the table.

_What are you doing? What are you going to do to me now? _John wanted to yell, but all that came out was a soft, pain-filled moan. Jane fiddled with the IV bag near his head, and he watched her attach a tube to one end of it.

Then she turned on him, prying open his jaw and forcing the tube down his throat. John gagged as the end of the tube hit the back of his throat, but the old alien tightened his grip, preventing him from moving. John's arms flailed but he couldn't seem to bring them up to his face to pull the tube and Jane's hands away from him. He tried to bite down on the tube, but Jane immediately pried his mouth open again and jammed something between his teeth to keep him from biting down.

Something thick and cold dripped into his stomach. John looked up at the blurry IV bag full of brown liquid swinging behind the old alien's head. The tube that had been shoved down his throat was big, making it hard to breathe and inciting his gag reflex every few seconds. The old alien held John's head in place, his fingers digging painfully into skin as John struggled against him. He felt slightly lightheaded as he dragged in a deep breath.

Jane stood over the tabletop, and John wondered if it was some type of live X-ray machine. At that moment, he was glad he wasn't a doctor. Knowing exactly what all the alien equipment and various tests were for—or at least being able to make an educated guess—would probably have freaked him out even more than he was. _Ignorance is bliss, right?_

John drifted, his energy drained completely from being sick and from struggling against the larger, stronger aliens. Minutes later—or hours? He had no idea—Jane moved the tabletop X-ray machine away and began pulling on the tube in John's throat.

As soon as the end of it hit the back of his throat, he started gagging. Jane threw the used tubing to the side and grabbed a flat, plastic bucket. The old alien lifted John up and turned him to the side, lining John's head up with Jane's bucket. Brown, viscous gunk spewed from John's mouth, the taste a cross between black licorice, bile, and rotting vegetables. It was enough to cause John to heave again.

The cycle continued until there was nothing left in his stomach. John shook uncontrollably in the old alien's arms. The hands shifted, lifting him so he was almost upright, and then something was shoved into his mouth again. Liquid was squirted into his mouth, hitting the back of his throat and sliding down to his stomach. It tasted like water, but the second it hit his stomach, he started heaving again.

The old alien flipped him over and held him over the bucket. The vomit was a lighter brown color, but the taste was still strong enough for John's stomach to coil and buck until he was dry heaving. He sucked in a breath, and then the old alien lifted him upright and the process was repeated all over again.

John was pretty sure he passed out periodically throughout the process, so he wasn't sure how many times he was lifted, forced to swallow water, then held over a bucket to puke. He woke up heaving, slipped unconscious as soon as his stomach settled, then woke up heaving again and wishing he would just die.

.

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.

He didn't die. He woke up in his cage, staring at the ceiling. The room was bright, indicating daytime, and John wondered how long he'd been unconscious. The memory of being sick was both hazy and terrifying. He blinked slowly, hearing noises in the room but unable to turn his head or move his body. His head was pounding, and he felt feverishly hot. Within seconds, he drifted off to sleep again.

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.

He woke up again in the same position. The shadows across the top of his cage had changed, and again he wondered how long he'd been asleep. He felt his eyelids pulling down and was on the verge of drifting off again when he was startled awake by the creaking of the cage door opening.

John tried to turn his head but nothing happened. Before he could even begin to panic about the weakness of his own body, the old alien was kneeling over him, holding the now familiar non-needle syringe. _A baby bottle, _John thought in disgust. He tensed as much as he was able to—which was hardly at all—as the alien lifted his head slightly and stuck the bottle in John's mouth.

John could do nothing beyond blink and swallow when the water was squirted into his mouth. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was until the water began sliding down his throat, but given the amount of throwing up he had done, he was probably severely dehydrated. The old alien was gentler this time around, squeezing the water into John's mouth slowly and giving John time to swallow and not choke.

The water was gone way too soon. John would have begged for more if he thought any of them would have understood him. That, of course, was assuming he had the energy to speak in the first place. The old alien lowered John's head back to the floor and backed out of the cage.

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.

Another day passed, then another. John slept through all of it, periodically waking up when the old alien, or Jane, or sometimes an unknown face would open up the cage and give John water. John would suck down the water greedily, then slip off to sleep almost immediately. Gradually, his headache died down and each time he woke up, he felt a little bit stronger.

Finally, John woke up on his own and was not instantly consumed with the need to go back to sleep. He rolled onto his side, groaning when the sore muscles in his stomach and around his ribs pulled. The room was dark, so it was sometime in the middle of the night. He felt stronger this time, which filled him with endless relief.

A bowl of water was set nearby, and he pushed himself up on shaky limbs toward it. A second bowl, filled with red and yellow leaves was set next to it, but John steered clear. He wasn't sure if he could survive a repeat of the last few days. He drank all of the water, however, then crawled carefully over to the litter box to relieve himself. He noted that the gravelly sand had been changed out since he'd thrown up, and he wondered what else he'd missed during his long bouts of oblivion.

He crawled back to his blanket and curled up on the side, wishing he had more than just boxers on. It was almost chilly, and he shivered a little. He'd almost drifted asleep when he heard a soft whimper from across the room. John looked up, peering through the darkness of the room. In the cage directly across from him, he could see something moving around in the shadows. It paced back and forth, never pausing long enough for John to get a clear view.

John felt his spirits lift, followed almost immediately by dread. He was tired of being alone and wanted someone else to be here as well, experiencing what he had experienced so that they could stare at each other from across their cages and say, "Yes, this is really happening to us." At the same time, he wouldn't wish this on anyone, especially someone he knew. Like his team.

John swallowed against a sudden pain entirely unrelated to anything that had been done physically to him. He counted back in his head, trying to figure out again how long it had been since he'd been separated from them. At least three days of being sick, maybe even four, then before that…

He frowned, rubbing his forehead and then the thick beard on his face. He couldn't remember before that. Had it been three days? More? Less? It felt longer. Maybe it had been a week. He sighed. His body felt heavy with exhaustion again. For all he knew, it could have been three weeks.

John took a deep breath and rubbed his hand against his chest. He wondered if his team was looking for him, but knew they would be. Assuming they'd survived the animal stampede. As long as his team wasn't here, he decided, then he could believe they were safe. There was a soft growl from across the room, and John looked up in time to see an animal poke its head against the bars of its cage. Its short fur was a dark purplish black and glinted in the pale light, and it dragged long, sharp claws across the floor.

John laid back. _Another animal to join the fun, _he thought. He grinned a little, surprised at the relief he felt that he was, in a way, no longer alone.

TBC…


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter 6_

John's reprieve from Jane's medical tests was over the next morning. He'd fallen deep asleep and the sound of keys jingling in the lock of his cage door felt far away, like a dream. He tried to open his eyes, but after the first unsuccessful attempt, he gave up, content to let himself slide back to sleep—if he was really even awake.

A buzz, then a sharp jolt of electricity ripped through his side. He half sat up, screaming, before collapsing back to the floor. The muscles in his ribs where he'd been jabbed with the electric prod twitched wildly, and he panted against both the pain from the shock and the shock of waking up so abruptly. He caught movement out of the corner of his half closed eyes and knew Pavlov was coming for him. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the jolt of pain from the electric prod.

The pain didn't come—not right away. John cracked his eyes open, and gasped when he saw Pavlov's wide, pale face bending over him. The eyes were dark and bright, filled with some kind of emotion John could not identify. The alien allowed the end of the prod to hover over John's stomach.

Pavlov spoke, and John frowned at the sound. He couldn't understand a single word, but the tone and intent were almost recognizable. Whatever Pavlov had had to say to John, he'd said it quietly so only he could hear him. The alien's face pulled back then in a terrifying sneer, and he jabbed the end of the prod into John's stomach.

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.

.

John woke up next in Jane's lab. His stomach cramped and twisted and throbbed. He was lying on the metal tabletop, unrestrained. Jane's back was turned away from him and studying something on a counter on the far side of the room. This was his chance, the moment he'd been waiting for.

_Escape escape escape escape. _His mind screamed at him. John twisted on the table and managed to edge himself closer and closer to the side. The door into the room was on this side of the lab, maybe fifteen feet away from the table, and it was propped open. He squirmed a little more, keeping his eyes trained on the hallway. So far, the hallway outside seemed quiet and empty.

John heard a noise from Jane, a soft guttural grunting. He turned his head toward her in a panic, wondering if he'd made any noise. He watched her rub her hands through the braided ropes of hair covering her head. She'd straightened momentarily, but then immediately bent over the counter again and continued to mumble to herself.

John turned his head away from her and focused again on the edge of the table. He wiggled slowly, biting his lip against the sharp, throbbing pain in his stomach. _Damn you, Pavlov,_ he thought. He pressed one arm into his stomach to hold the pain at bay and reached out with the other. John's fingers curled around the edge of the table.

He cringed at the sound of Jane yelping behind him, and his heart began beating frantically when he heard her moving around. He was so close—so, so close. He pulled at the edge of the table, ignoring the pain spiking in his body as he slid closer.

And then, suddenly, he was at the edge and rolling forward. There was a brief moment where he felt himself suspended in the air, and then he was falling. The ground rushed up at him, and he couldn't seem to get his legs completely underneath him fast enough. His body slammed into the ground, shoulder first. His left ankle hit next and twisted painfully beneath him. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out when he felt the ankle pop, and then both knees slammed into the ground. His throat was raw, his vocal cords expended after who knows how much screaming he'd been doing.

He lay on the floor and squirmed weakly against the onslaught of pain. All thoughts of escape fled his mind. He heard Jane's high-pitched guttural voice over his head. Bile rose in his throat and he clenched his teeth in desperation. There was no way either his throat or his stomach could handle vomiting right now.

Jane lifted him up and placed him gently on the table. He was vaguely aware of her petting the side of his head as she tried to soothe him. Time passed in a blur. John shook as he tried to breathe through the pain and was relieved when his churning stomach began to settle down a little while later.

He gasped when Jane gently began un-prying him, pulling his limbs out straight and rolling him so he was flat on his back on the table. She did her usual check, pressing against his arms, legs, chest, stomach, neck, and head. He winced at the shooting pain in his shoulder as she maneuvered one of his arms and cried out in a hoarse, choking gasp when she touched his swollen ankle, but when Jane pressed against his stomach, he jackknifed up off the table.

His vision grayed as the pain in his stomach consumed him, and he distantly felt her arms wrap around him and lower him gently back to the table. She rubbed his face and head again with her hand, alternately scratching the side of his head lightly with the nails of her long fingers.

He was an animal. John jolted at the thought. He'd known it before, but it struck with such force this time that he almost jerked away from Jane's touch. Thank God he was the test subject of a kind doctor, but he was still a test subject. No matter how much she cared for him or worried about his welfare, eventually she would do what she had to do for her science.

The sudden absence of Jane's hands startled John into opening his eyes. Jane stood nearby, filling one of the baby bottles with a light blue liquid. She turned back almost immediately and lifted John into a sitting position. John whimpered soundlessly at the throbbing pain the movement incited, and he sagged into her arms. Jane tilted his head back, and John opened his mouth at the sight of the syringe, sucking in every last drop of the blue liquid like a baby.

Whatever the blue liquid was, it was effective. It had no discernible taste, but gradually the screaming pains throughout his body diminished. His limbs grew heavy, almost numb, and his head slumped forward. Jane lifted him and John's arms and legs dangled limply as she cradled him in her arms. She was speaking softly to him, petting him again with one hand.

They walked back to the cage. John could barely feel his lifeless body. Jane had positioned him like a small child with his head on her shoulder, but when she stopped to talk to the pen tapper at the desk, his weight shifted inadvertently, and his head lolled backward to hang awkwardly. A moment later, Jane moved again, bringing a hand up to lift John's head and reposition it on her shoulder, and he sighed in relief.

The next thing he knew, she had deposited him in his cage and locked the door. He stared at her through half-lidded eyes as she watched him. Her eyes were bright, the corners of her mouth pulled down. She looked sad. She left finally, but John could not move the muscles in his neck to turn his head, and he stared in a drugged stupor at the space Jane had occupied. It was a long time before his eyes finally closed and he slipped into sleep.

* * *

The blue liquid drug wore off sometime during the night. John woke up to throbbing pain in his shoulder, stomach, ankle, and knees. The room was dark and quiet, and he dragged himself over to the darkest corner of the litter box to take care of business. By the time he was done, he was shaking from the exertion, and his heart stuttered as he tried to breath through the pain. He could feel himself growing weaker. His mouth was dry and he looked toward the bowl of water, but it was four feet away at least, and tonight, four feet was too far.

John drifted off to sleep again, waking up to streaming sunlight. A low, hissing growl caused him to lift his head slightly and look at that cage across from his. The animal behind the bars was pacing again, occasionally moving close enough to hiss at something standing nearby.

_Pavlov._ The alien stepped forward into John's line of sight and poked the animal in the face with a long bar. The animal jumped back with a cry and Pavlov made a rolling, throaty, grunting noise. _Laughter,_ John decided. Pavlov was laughing. He dropped his heavy head back to the ground and hoped Pavlov kept his attention on the other animal.

Not to be. John jerked his eyes open at the sound of keys in his cage door. Pavlov swung the door open, then crouched down to crawl in. He still held the bar he'd been poking the other animal with.

With a surge of adrenaline infusing his body with energy he had not had a moment before, John jerked up and scrambled to the back corner of his cage. The bar in Pavlov's hand was not—as John had assumed—the electric prod. It was a gun. John hit the back wall but managed to stay standing on shaky legs. Pavlov swung the gun around, pointing it directly at John.

"I won't fight. I won't fight," John rasped. He held his hands up and tried to still his shaking body. "Don't shoot, please. I won't fight." He was begging, he knew it, but he also knew that he couldn't handle getting shot.

Pavlov fired the weapon. It was over with before it had barely begun. John looked down in shock at a sharp stabbing pain in his leg that quickly became numb. Some type of feathered dart stuck there. John took a deep breath even as his legs folded underneath him and he slid against the wall to the ground.

"You bastard," he slurred. He kept sliding until his head hit the ground. His arms were heavy and useless, and darkness crept in along the edges of his vision. He saw Pavlov crouching in the cage, still holding the gun, a grimace twisting the alien's face, and then he saw no more.

* * *

"Hey, buddy," Ronon said. John lay curled up on the floor of an empty, white room, his knees pulled tight into his chest.

"Hey," John answered. He was freezing.

"Stop lying around," Ronon said, grinning down at his friend. John watched him squat down a few feet away.

"Help me," John whispered.

"Can't."

"Why not?"

Ronon pointed to a thin blue line that encircled John. "Can't cross that."

"Get up!" Ronon's face morphed into McKay's and the physicist slapped his hand on the floor. "Get up, Sheppard."

"C-cold," John chattered, and he wrapped his arms around his bare chest even more tightly.

"So you're just going to lie there and die? You're just going to give up?" McKay started pacing, and then his heavy steps turned light and Teyla walked past his head.

"John," she said, her voice light and musical. "Don't give up, John."

"Not…g-giving up…" John stammered. His body was starting to shake uncontrollably.

"Don't die, John."

John shook his head.

"Die, John."

John opened his eyes and reared back. Teyla's face morphed into a Wraith's, which in turn morphed into Pavlov's. Pavlov held the electric cattle prod.

"Die, John," he said and he slammed the end of the prod into John's stomach.

John screamed, sitting part way up before collapsing back to the ground. No, not the ground. A table. The final images of the nightmare dissipated, and he could just make out Jane's lab in the darkness. He looked around for Pavlov, but found himself alone in the room.

He blinked his eyes, trying to remember what had happened. Nausea churned in his stomach at the sudden memory of Pavlov shooting him with a tranquilizer dart, and he moved his hands to cover the pulsing ache in his stomach. A railing had been raised around the table, and the small leather blanket was draped partially over John's body. The table had been turned into a crib or pen.

A minute later, the stomach ache still hadn't let up. John rolled onto his side and curled into himself. His arms felt heavy and his head was pounding, and he could tell there was something wrong with his leg. He panted, willing the bile in his stomach to stay down as his gut twisted and cramped. He couldn't feel his leg. John squeezed his eyes shut at the memory of the dart hitting his right leg, of the sharp pain and then the absolute numbness that quickly followed.

He was dying. He could feel it. The knowledge came to his mind with absolute surety. His heart stuttered in his chest. The door to the lab was wide open. The hallway was quiet, the lab itself empty. John stared at the open door and felt moisture pool in his eyes, but he had no energy left to fight.

A bright light flipped on overhead, and John cringed and jerked as the light stabbed into his eyes. Jane was suddenly bending over him, and she spoke as she rubbed John's shoulder. Her attempts to soothe him were in vain, however. They had never really soothed him, he realized. His body shook uncontrollably. He was freezing cold, but he could feel the sweat dripping off his skin.

Jane lowered one of the bars and lifted John up. She continued to speak to him as she cradled him in her arms and sat down on a nearby chair. She stroked his head as he shook. When she held a bottle to John's mouth, he took it without question, and she fed him as she rocked. John started to laugh at the image this created in his mind, but the sound caught in his throat and he choked on the water. When Jane lifted him and began rubbing his back, he felt tears burning in his eyes, and nothing about any of this was funny to him anymore.

In Jane's arms, he was a little warmer than he had been, and the tremors in his body slowly stilled. _Get up, John. Don't give up._ The voices of his team floated around him, and his heart stuttered. He wondered if he would ever see them again, and the thought left a heavy, unrelenting pressure in his chest.

* * *

When he woke up again, he was back on the table. The railings had been lowered and the blanket removed. He tried to lift his head up to look around and realized that it was strapped down. Something pulled at his face, and he could just see the edge of a clear plastic mask over his nose. Tubes snaked away from the mask to a small tank set next to the table, barely visible in the corner of his eye.

_What the hell? _John thought. He was getting sick and tired of these aliens and all their tubes and contraptions. His arms were strapped down as well, and he pulled uselessly against them. He could feel another strap over his waist and one over his knees. The straps around his ankles were as strong as the ones around his wrists, and one of them dug painfully into his swollen ankle. As he struggled, he realized that his boxers had finally been taken from him. His heart thudded heavily in his chest when he realized they'd been taken off of him without him realizing it, and he wondered what else had been done to him while he'd lain oblivious in Jane's lab.

John forced himself to take a deep breath. He would know, he was sure of it, if they'd done something weird to him while he'd been unconscious. As freaked out as he was about being strapped naked to a table, he didn't feel like he'd been violated in that way.

_Not yet anyway, _he thought. He fought against the fear and panic threatening to drag him under and pulled against the straps again. He was alone, and if he could find some weakness in the bindings, then he still had a chance. But even as the idea crossed his mind, the door opened.

Four aliens entered the lab, their faces and heads covered in weird shrouds. One of them moved forward and stroked the side of his face, and he recognized Jane's sad eyes just barely visible through a gap in her mask. The other aliens gathered around him then. Jane spoke, and John wished he could understand even just a few words, and then she held out a gloved hand.

Someone handed her a scalpel. The overhead light glinted off the metal, serrated edge. John's heart began to double time as Jane moved the scalpel down toward his chest. They were going to cut him open. They were going to cut him open while he was awake. All this time they'd pumped him full of numbing drugs, and now they were giving him nothing. He squirmed, but the straps held him down firmly.

He felt a sharp stinging sensation in the center of his chest that grew deeper as Jane pressed the scalpel against his sternum. He gave a choked cry as he felt the blade move across his skin. It burned and throbbed, and John shuddered beneath the knife.

The aliens bent forward, peering closely at the incision Jane was making. John tried to scream, but no sound came out. He panted as the ceiling above whirled dizzily. The aliens were speaking and yelling at one another, pointing to each other and turning toward the door of the lab, but John was barely aware of anything. A loud buzzing noise filled his ears as he struggled to pull in a breath.

There was a deep rumbling sound that shook the table John was strapped to and his eyes flew open to see Jane staring in shock at the door, the scalpel in her hand dripping blood.

TBC…


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter 7_

The percussion grenade ripped through the door, the explosion deafening. Ronon braced himself against the wall, closing his eyes on instinct as smoke and heat billowed out into the hallway. According to McKay, Sheppard was in that room, and Ronon hoped they weren't too late.

_One, two, three, _he counted silently to himself. He and Major Lorne moved at the same time, kicking through the door and holding their weapons up. The room was huge, like the rest of the building. They'd run down long, wide hallways and past doorways three times their height. Everything in the place had been tall and huge and even Ronon had felt small.

Alarms blared overhead. Ronon swept the room with his eyes, seeing two aliens down on the ground, unmoving. One alien, its gray fur speckled with wet, black oil was on its hands and knees a few feet away from him, shaking its head, clearly dazed. A fourth alien stood behind a table, a knife red bright and gleaming in its hand. And on the table…

Ronon screamed in rage and lunged at the table, firing his weapon. The alien's eyes widened in fear at his approach. It dropped the knife and stumbled backward, tripping on something behind it and just barely missed getting hit by Ronon's weapon. The blast hit the far wall, black and smoking as it burned through the paint. As soon as the alien hit the ground, it scrambled backward as far away from the table and Ronon as it could get.

Ronon ignored it. The top of the table came up to Ronon's shoulders and he jumped up on top of it. His hands shook in grief and fury as he fumbled to undo the straps. Sheppard lay on the table, his eyes glassy and unblinking as he stared up at the ceiling. Blood covered his upper body and pooled on the table underneath him, pumping from an incision running the length of his chest and stomach.

_He was dead. They were too late. They took too long. _The thoughts ran through Ronon's mind at a frantic pace, and his hands ripped at the straps. He screamed again as his fingers slipped around one of the bands covered in blood before he thought of cutting through them with a knife.

Sheppard drew in a ragged breath, and blinked twice before going completely still again.

"Holy shit," Lorne breathed as he climbed up onto the table on the opposite side of Ronon.

"He's alive," Ronon said, but Sheppard stared unblinking at the ceiling. A thick beard covered his face, and Ronon could see sunken cheeks and dark circles under his glassy eyes.

Lorne reached out, tentatively feeling for a pulse in Sheppard's neck, and sighed in relief a moment later. He cut through the straps on his side of the table, then started slapping bandages onto the long incision. Ronon moved down to the straps around Sheppard's legs, and grimaced at the sight of the swollen left ankle. Lorne yelled for more bandages and a stretcher.

Ronon moved up near Sheppard's head and carefully gathered his friend's limp body in his arms. He and Lorne lifted Sheppard onto a stretcher, mindful of the myriad of bruises all over his body. Once on the stretcher, they gently lowered him to the ground. By the time Ronon dropped down, someone had thrown a blanket over him and fastened straps around his body to secure him. Sheppard's eyes had slid closed, and Lorne kneeled next to him, feeling for a pulse. He nodded at the others a second later.

"Let's get the hell out of here," he said.

Two of the Marines picked up the stretcher and the group headed out. Lorne led the way, then Sheppard flanked on either side by two Marine units, and Ronon brought up the rear. They ran through the long hallways, shooting sporadically at the strange, tall aliens that occasionally poked their heads out of doors. Ronon kept one eye on the hallway and doors and one on Sheppard, wishing Beckett was there.

_They would reach the jumper soon enough,_ he thought. Ronon swung around as a door opened behind him, but the alien poking its head into the hall jerked back with a cry before Ronon got a shot off, and the blast hit the door.

"Damn it," he grunted. He thought of the alien with the knife, its reddish blond fur quaking in fear as it crawled away. He should have killed it, but concern for Sheppard's survival overrode his instincts. The last time he'd seen it, it had been cowering in the corner, sobbing, and the alien with the gray, mottled fur had been crawling toward it.

Despite the alarms, the building had remained fairly empty. The few aliens they had run into had seemed more shocked than anything, and Ronon wondered if anyone had ever broken into their facility before. He didn't think so. Most of the aliens scrambled to get away from them, not attack them. Only one had put up any resistance.

Ronon remembered the tall alien running at them, swinging a bar, and screaming. Its tight black braids had whipped around its face as it flattened one of the Marines at the front and jammed the bar into the man's side. The Marine had screamed and arched away from the bar, like he was being electrocuted. Ronon had not missed with his weapon that time, and the alien with the electric weapon had gone down quickly. He had stepped over the alien's body, kicking away the bar even though the creature was obviously dead. Black blood, thick and viscous, had pooled underneath it.

Minutes later, the group was outside and running across a spacious courtyard. Sheppard's head bounced a little as they ran.

"Careful," Ronon yelled. The jumper materialized in front of them and Beckett stepped out of the back, waving his arm frantically at them to hurry up. They piled in and the jumper took off almost before the door had completely closed behind them.

The Marines moved out of the way as best as they could, but they were packed into the small space. Nevertheless, Beckett squatted on the ground next to Sheppard, consumed in his work. Ronon caught a glimpse of Sheppard's face through the chaos. His eyes were closed, and he looked dead.

"We're approaching the gate. Two minutes to Atlantis," McKay yelled. His voice was high-pitched but calm as he guided the jumper smoothly over the tall trees and toward the cliffs and the gate.

As soon as the gate activated, Beckett began yelling frantic orders to the infirmary on the other side. Ronon hardly noticed when the jumper disintegrated into the wormhole and reappeared in the gate room. A medical team was already in the jumper bay, and Ronon helped them move Sheppard's stretcher onto the gurney.

And then they were gone. The Marines filed out somewhat in a daze as they came off the adrenaline of the rescue. Lorne cleared his throat a few times before taking control of the group and sending them off to unload their weapons at the armory and head down to the infirmary for post-mission checks. Ronon stood near the door, staring down the hall where Sheppard and the medical team had disappeared.

"He was alive? He was okay?" McKay asked, stepping up next to him. Ronon forced his head to turn to look at the physicist. McKay was wringing his hands and bouncing on the balls of his feet, his whole body coiled in fear and anxiety. Ronon opened his mouth to answer, but his throat was suddenly dry and he found he couldn't make a sound.

* * *

"We've got him stable," Beckett said, hours later. "But he's in bad shape."

Ronon nodded, looking in relief at the rest of his team. He and McKay had collapsed into chairs outside of the infirmary as soon as they'd been debriefed and had their own post-mission checks. Teyla had joined them, still looking tired and ragged from worrying about Sheppard and her own injuries sustained two weeks before.

Two weeks. It had taken them two weeks to find Sheppard. Weir had eventually joined them in the long wait, and when she had met Ronon's eyes, he had known that she was thinking the same thing he was. It had taken too long. Teyla had sighed, closing her eyes and resting her head against McKay's shoulder. McKay had looked at her in surprise and near panic at first, but when she'd hugged her casted arm close to her body, he had relaxed and let her be.

Beckett's voice brought all of them to their feet, but he waved them back into their seats and dropped into his own chair in exhaustion. He rubbed at his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose before looking up into the concerned faces of Sheppard's friends.

"Carson…" Weir started.

Beckett sighed. "I'm not sure where to start. His injuries were extensive. I'm shocked, actually, by what they were able to do to him in such a relatively short amount of time, but it could have been a lot worse." He clasped his hands together, and Ronon noticed they were shaking, just a little bit.

"First of all, he's covered in bruises, head to foot," the doctor continued. "Some of them are relatively old—possibly a result of the animal stampede you were all in a few weeks ago. He's obviously been beaten continuously since he was captured. The worst of the bruising is on his chest, back, and stomach, but by some miracle, there aren't any broken bones or internal bleeding. We ran a scan on him and it looks like he had a slight concussion initially, but that take care of itself eventually."

McKay snorted, but the others ignored him. Beckett took another deep breath. "His two most obvious injuries are the left ankle and the incision on his chest and stomach. I thought for sure the ankle was broken, but as it turns out, it's just severely sprained."

"And the cut on his chest?" Weir prodded when the doctor paused.

"It was deep, and he lost a lot of blood, but we've got him stitched up now and we're pumping some of that lost blood back into him as we speak."

"They were dissecting him," Ronon stated. The others turned to him in shock. Beckett's face had gone white, and for a second, Ronon thought the doctor was going to pass out, but then his cheeks flushed red with anger.

"Aye, I suspected as much," he finally said, his voice low and threatening. "I was really hoping that wasn't the case, though."

The others nodded, and Ronon flashed on the lab again. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the alien standing over Sheppard's body, the knife in its hand dripping with blood.

"He's going to be okay, though, right?" McKay finally asked.

Beckett was shaking his head before the physicist had finished talked. "He's half-starved and dehydrated, and his stomach and esophagus are raw and inflamed from repeated vomiting. We just got the lab results back as well, and a number of unknown substances were found in his blood. And that's just his physical state. I can't even begin to guess what his mental state will be."

Sheppard was thin, almost skeletal. Ronon had seen that right away. He slammed a hand into the wall in frustration and yelled, causing a passing scientist to jump and disappear quickly around the corner.

Tests, drugs, beatings, starvation. It was obvious what kind of treatment Sheppard had received over the last two weeks. He thought of the alien with the electroshock weapon and wondered if Sheppard had been subjected to it as well. He remembered the blaze of anger and malice in the black-haired alien's eyes as it jammed the end of the bar into the Marine, and Ronon knew it had done the same thing to Sheppard.

"There's one other thing that's got me a little nervous." Beckett's voice broke through Ronon's thoughts. "His blood work shows some type of compound related to that sting ray venom he was injected with a few months ago."

"Those freaky aliens had a sting ray too?" McKay asked, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

"No, I don't think so. We're still running some tests, so what we know is only preliminary. It looks like something they injected John with interacted with the remaining 'radioactive' compound from the sting ray, creating a new but similar substance in his blood."

"What's it doing to him?" Weir asked.

Beckett frowned, making his face look years older. "Most of substance is in his right leg, near the site in his calf where he was bitten by the sting ray. We tested his reflexes, and as of right now, his right leg is completely unresponsive."

"What does that mean?" Ronon asked. McKay, who had been fidgeting next to him, went still.

Beckett shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know yet. Whatever this substance is, it appears to be interfering with the nerves in his leg. And don't ask me if it's causing permanent damage, because I don't know," he said as he turned to McKay cutting off the question on the tip of the scientist's tongue. McKay snapped his jaw shut.

"The substance itself is slowly metabolizing on its own, and we're giving him some medication to help that along, but it will take some time before we know anything for sure," Beckett finished.

"Can we see him?" Teyla asked.

"Just for a moment, but then you'll all have to leave. We need to keep the area around his bed clear for now."

They nodded and filed silently into the infirmary. They'd been here before—Ronon knew what to expect—but the sight of his friend under all the medical equipment still freaked him out in a way he would never admit to anyone.

Sheppard lay on the bed, his head tilted to one side and his mouth slightly open. He was ashen and covered in a film of sweat. His thick beard had been shaved off, revealing black and yellow bruises that covered the side of his face, and dark, almost black, smudges under his eyes that made him look haunted even in sleep. He was thin and frail, and a small white tube taped to his face threaded into one of his nostrils.

As the others moved around the bed, Ronon hung back. He saw the lab again, saw the tall alien with the mask holding the bloody knife. Saw Sheppard strapped to the table—pale and bruised and covered in blood, his chest a gaping wound. He grit his teeth until his jaw ached.

Teyla reached out with her uninjured hand and brushed his forehead with her fingers. "He is warm," she whispered.

"He's running a bit of a fever," Beckett answered.

Sheppard's arms were covered in IVs, running much needed liquid and blood and medication and who knew what else into his body. He was covered in a light sheet, but Ronon could see a mass of bandages over his chest and a few spots of blood seeping through. His left shoulder was bruised almost black, and his left ankle was propped up and covered in ice packs. He was utterly still.

Weir gripped Sheppard's hand and rubbed his knuckles until she glanced down and saw the faded discoloration of old bruises under her thumb. Teyla kept reaching her hand forward to touch his face, but would jerk away after only a few seconds. McKay, abnormally subdued, rocked back and forth on his feet. Ronon felt the urge to scream and slam his fists into the wall, but instead jammed his hands under his armpits, as if that would contain his rage.

"Alright, you've seen him. Out with you now," Beckett whispered, and he waved the group out of the infirmary.

* * *

John wasn't sure exactly when he woke up, but he was suddenly aware that he wasn't dreaming. He heard soft muted sounds around him, but exhaustion pulled on every part of his body, and he couldn't bring himself to open his eyes and look around. He lay there immobile, wanting everyone around him to believe he was still unconscious but not sure why this was so important.

He tried to remember what happened, but the only thing he could think of was that he needed to move, to escape. His entire body ached—his chest throbbed and burned more than anywhere else. He took a deep breath and felt something pulling on his nose.

A tube. He had another damn tube shoved down his face. He remembered suddenly the clear mask over his nose and the tubing leading away from it and connected to a tank. He could almost feel the straps across his body and the scalpel digging through skin until it grated against bone. Blood. Scalpel. Chest. The pain in his chest flared at the memory.

He felt a hand on his forehead, fingers running softly—soothingly—through his hair. Jane. She'd been about to cut him open, _dissect_ him while he was still awake. He moaned softly as his stomach twisted and churned, and another hand gripped his own.

"John?"

The voice was soft and tentative. Jane? His heart was pounding in his chest. He had to escape—he had to get out. They were going to kill him.

"I'll get the doc."

That voice was low. John almost recognized it, but then he flashed on Pavlov and the low guttural grunting sounds he had made before jamming the electric prod into his stomach. He felt a hand on his head, then another on his shoulder, and he twisted to get away from Jane's touch. The tube in his nose pulled slightly and he groaned.

_No more,_ John thought. _No more tubes. I can't do this anymore._ He thought of Jane carrying him around like a child, of Pavlov and the old pen tapper holding him like an animal.

"Colonel? Can you hear me?"

_Not real not real escape escape escape._ John's mind screamed at him, but all he could do was squirm weakly. Hands on his face held his head still, and John waited for them to pry his mouth open and shove another tube down his throat.

"John, lad? Come on. I know you're awake."

John's heart was racing, and as he flailed weakly beneath the hands holding him down, every ache and pain in his body reawakened. Nausea churned in his stomach, and he panted, not wanting to throw up again.

"Open your eyes, John," the voice above his head commanded.

"John, we are home. In Atlantis. You will be alright," another voice said.

He had heard that before. Someone had said that to him a long time ago. He remembered the gate room, remembered Rodney yelling at Marines, remembered Ronon holding him up. He remembered Teyla lifting his head and whispering those same words. Teyla. His chest ached and he whimpered.

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's been through a lot, Rodney. Give him a moment."

"Well, excuse me, Carson."

Rodney. Carson. Teyla. Atlantis? Hands were on his face and arms, petting him again. He opened his eyes slowly.

"There you are, lad." Someone with blue eyes and short brown hair was leaning over him, his hands on either side of John's face. John followed those hands as he reached into the pocket of a white lab coat and pulled out a thin penlight. "Hold still for me," Carson said.

The penlight flashed into one eye, then another, and John whimpered. His throat was dry and sore. Carson moved back, releasing John's head. John turned his head away from him, expecting to see Jane standing next to him, and he blinked in surprise when it was Teyla's face that came into focus. She stood on the other side of the bed, holding his hand in both of hers. Rodney and Ronon stood together near his feet and peered at him with open concern.

His team. Carson. Home. He was home. He took in a deep shuddering breath. Home. Was he home? He was dying, or had been. He'd been absolutely sure of that. He saw Jane standing over him, her eyes sad behind the mask on her face, the knife in her hand. Blood.

"I'm just going to check your wound," Carson said, and John felt hands tugging at the gown and blankets covering his chest. Clothes—he had clothes again. He squeezed his eyes closed then opened them again, waiting for Atlantis to disappear around him. Waiting to wake up in his cage with the bowls of water and inedible food and the litter box. Waiting for Pavlov to show up with his cattle prod and tranquilizer gun.

Jane stood over him, the scalpel in her hands dripping blood. John moaned at the sharp, burning pain in his chest.

"John?"

He was starting to tremble. He could feel it in all of his muscles, and the harder he tried to stop the trembling, the worse it got.

"John, are you alright, lad? Are you in pain?"

Pain. He was in pain. He shook harder and heard an alarm going off on one of the monitors near his bed. He looked up and saw a clear IV bag with more tubing snaking down to his arm. And then the IV bag wasn't clear—it was brown and thick and sliding down his throat. He gagged, then swallowed, willing himself not to throw up.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Just a second, Rodney," Carson snapped, and then John's vision was filled by Carson's face, tired and drawn and etched in concern. "John, relax. You're home and safe. Do you understand?"

John heard the words but couldn't focus long enough on Carson's voice to muster a response. A movement out of the corner of his eye startled him, and he thrashed weakly, waiting for the pain from the electric prod to explode throughout his body.

A hand on his head. Fingers running through his hair. He looked over at Jane, but it wasn't Jane. It was Teyla. Her eyes were wide and bright—afraid. John shook harder. Carson pulled out a syringe and John closed his eyes tightly.

Something cold ran up the veins in his arms and the shaking in his body slowed. His arms and head grew heavy, and he had to force his eyes to open again. His team and Carson stood around him.

"Just relax, John," Carson was saying. "You're going to be fine. You just need some rest."

"We'll be here, John, when you wake up," Teyla whispered, her head close to his own.

"Yeah, not going anywhere," Rodney answered.

"Get better, Sheppard," Ronon said, the first thing he'd said the whole time.

John nodded, but the nod turned into his head sagging into the pillow as Carson's drugs took effect. John's eyes slid closed, and the sounds around him grew dim. He felt a hand on his head, petting his hair. Jane.

TBC…

_A/N: I have to admit, the last scene in this chapter was one of my favorites to write, and it was actually the first clear image I had when I started brainstorming ideas for this story. Thanks for reading! A couple more chapters to go...most of the rest of this came about in the second draft, after some major editing, although I always knew exactly how I wanted to end it. Hope it works out. Enjoy!!_


	8. Chapter 8

_Chapter 8_

"Get better, Sheppard," Ronon said. He stood at the foot of the bed next to McKay, his arms folded tightly over his chest. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach as he watched Sheppard go limp and slump into the bed.

He squeezed his hands into fists and buried them deeper under his crossed arms. Sheppard's eyes had darted around the infirmary in confusion, resting on each of them for a few seconds at a time, but not really seeing anything. He hadn't said a word, and then he'd started shaking. At first, the trembling had been barely noticeable but by the time Beckett had given him something, Sheppard was visibly shaking the bed.

"He'll be out for awhile," the doctor said. "Go—"

"He's been out since he got here—four days ago," McKay interrupted. "How much longer?"

"Go take a break, all of you," the doctor finished, ignoring McKay. "Get some food and some rest."

McKay stared back in defiance, but finally gave up. They all knew the answer to how much longer anyway. Sheppard would wake up when he was ready to wake up. Teyla rested her forehead on Sheppard's for a moment, then finally released the hand she'd kept a tight grip on.

"He's going to be fine," McKay said as the three of them walked out of the infirmary, but no one answered. Ronon watched the scientist walk a few steps ahead of them, his hands buried in the pockets of his coat. He seemed small.

"I have not had dinner yet," Teyla said a moment later, her eyes also on McKay. "Would you care to join me?" She glanced at Ronon, including him in on the invitation.

"Sure, okay, I could eat," McKay answered without looking up.

Ronon flashed on the tall alien with the electric weapon. In his mind, the alien jammed the bar into the Marine's side, and the man had screamed and arched away from the pain, but when he looked up at Ronon, his face morphed into that of Sheppard's.

"Not hungry right now," Ronon answered, his stomach twisting into knots. He could feel the anger beginning to pulse through him.

Teyla nodded. She looked at him closely, but didn't say anything more, and she and McKay disappeared down the hall to the mess. Ronon stood in the hallway for a moment. His hands were beginning to shake at the pent up energy coursing through him. Abruptly, he turned around and headed to the gym.

It was empty, which was probably a good thing. Ronon walked over to one of the punching bags—the one Sheppard had shown him only a few weeks after he had first arrived in Atlantis. He punched it as he walked up to it, screaming in frustration. The bag jerked on its chain as Ronon hammered it. His hands quickly became red and bruised, but he ignored them and punched until he lost track of time. Any pain he felt was minimal compared to what Sheppard must have gone through. He remembered the rooms full of cages—some of them occupied, some empty. Sheppard had been no better than an animal to them.

"Ronon?"

Ronon caught the punching bag and rested his head against it as he tried to catch his breath. Teyla hovered near the door for a moment then quietly approached him. Ronon did not turn around.

"Are you alright?"

Ronon nodded, but he punched the bag again, splitting his knuckle. He saw the lab again, with Sheppard strapped to the table, pale, bruised, bleeding. Again, his memory betrayed him, but this time he saw Sheppard turn his head toward him, eyes vacant even as his chest stilled.

_That didn't happen,_ he thought, and he grit his teeth.

"I'm fine," he grunted. He shook his head. He didn't do this; he didn't freak out like this anymore.

Teyla grabbed his hand, examining the cut. Blood dripped from it and down his fingers. It was already slowing down, but he allowed Teyla to lead him away from the bag to the bench near the window.

"I do not think this will require stitches, but you should have Doctor Beckett look at it," she chided.

"We should have found him sooner," Ronon blurted out. He hissed when Teyla pressed a clean towel over his hand.

"We did all we could, Ronon."

"What if it wasn't enough? You saw what they did to him."

Teyla pulled him up, keeping firm pressure on the cut on his hand. It was starting to sting.

"Yes, I did," Teyla whispered, her voice strained. They walked in silence down the hallways, and Ronon suddenly felt foolish with Teyla holding his hand, but he made no move to pull away. There was something comforting in it, and Teyla's grip was stronger, really, than it needed to be. Maybe she found it comforting as well.

They walked through the hall toward the infirmary, and thoughts came unbidden—memories and images of his last year and a half on Atlantis. He saw himself training with Sheppard, jogging in the early morning, checking the latest Daedalus shipment for new movies, and trying to talk Sheppard into watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy again. Sateda had been his home, always close to his heart, but to lose Atlantis—he thought that would be almost as painful now.

"What's happened?" Beckett's voice startled Ronon out of his thoughts. They had arrived in the infirmary, and Teyla was leading him over to a bed. Ronon grunted responses when called upon, but left most of the explaining to Teyla. Beckett tutted when he got a look at Ronon's hand, but his eyes were full of understanding.

The doctor pulled up a chair and began cleaning the cut, and Teyla wandered over toward Sheppard's bed. Ronon sat in silence as the doctor worked, hissing slightly when he hit a tender spot.

"There you go, lad," Beckett said a few minutes later. He wrapped Ronon's hand in gauze and secured the end with a piece of tape. "In the future, I would suggest using gloves."

"Yeah," Ronon answered. Beckett looked like he was about to say something else, but instead he patted the larger man on the shoulder and returned to his office.

Ronon looked around, spying Teyla in a chair next to Sheppard. He walked over there, gingerly flexing his hand. With all the blood all over the jumper, Ronon had been sure that Sheppard would not survive, but his friend had pulled through. The wait to hear one way or another had felt longer than the two weeks before that that they'd spend searching for him.

"Hey," Ronon said as he sat down next to Teyla. Teyla smiled at him softly, sadly. She had Sheppard's hand in a tight grip again. They sat there in silence, the only sound that of the heart monitor beeping steadily. Wires and tubes snaked in and out from under Sheppard's bandages and blankets. Ronon eyed the one taped to his friend's face in disgust—the feeding tube—but he knew it was delivering nutrients to Sheppard's desperate body.

"We got him back, Ronon." Teyla's voice broke through his thoughts. He realized his fists were clenched again and he forced the muscles in his hands to loosen.

"Do you think he'll be okay? I mean, do you think he'll be…like he was before?"

"John is strong. He will need our help, but he will be fine. You have to believe that." Teyla sounded more confident than she acted, and Ronon watched her eyes flicker over Sheppard's still body. His face was pale and drawn, and the dark circles under his eyes and sunken cheeks made him look like a corpse.

Ronon nodded. Sheppard was home and—despite his present appearance—alive. That was all they could worry about now. He thought of the tall alien with the bloody knife and wondered for the hundredth time if he should have killed it. It had looked scared and defenseless, but it had been ready to dissect Sheppard when he'd burst into the room.

"Hey, guys," McKay said as he entered the infirmary and walked over to them. He pulled up a chair next to Ronon and handed the larger man a muffin without a word. Ronon nodded his head, grateful without really knowing what to say.

* * *

John jerked awake with a gasp. His eyes flew open, taking in greens and blues that blurred together even as his eyes slid shut again. His heart was pounding, and he wondered if he'd had a nightmare. He couldn't remember. He took a deep breath, noticing a rapid beeping sound nearby.

A hand touched his arm and he jumped again. He rolled slightly away from the touch, moaning, but stopped short at the burning pain that ripped through his chest, stomach, and shoulder.

"Sorry," the voice was quiet, filled with worry.

More hands on his shoulders and back helped roll him back slowly onto the bed. The touch was gentle and painless, so when Ronon's face appeared above him, John blinked in surprise.

_Ronon? _He wanted to say, tried to say it, but his throat was dry and sore and he ended up coughing instead. Ronon raised John's bed slightly, and John groaned at the pain the movement caused. His head spun a little at the change in position as well.

"Here," the runner said, holding a glass of water. He prodded John's lips with the straw and John relaxed as the cool water ran down his aching throat. Ronon pulled the glass away after just a few seconds, then sat down in the chair next to the bed. Ronon stared at John, and John blinked languidly back at him.

"So, um…" Ronon started, squirming uncomfortably even as he looked John directly in the eye. John's body felt heavy and lethargic, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to fall back asleep.

"Ah, you're awake," Carson Beckett's voice boomed, startling John. He checked John's temperature, lungs, and heartbeat, explaining everything he did as he spoke. He acted cheerful, but there was something in his voice that belied that.

Beckett pulled the sheet down to John's waist, then undid his gown to check the bandages. He kept up a continuous conversation, occasionally asking John a question, pausing as he waited for a response, then continuing on with his examination when John remained silent. John hissed or whimpered as Beckett checked his injuries, but otherwise said nothing. He kept his eyes on Ronon, and Ronon kept his eyes on John.

A scraping sound signaled that Beckett had pulled up a chair on the other side of the bed, and when the doctor tapped his cheek, John finally turned his head to look at him.

"Why so quiet John?" he asked.

John swallowed. In the back of his mind, he heard the guttural sounds of the tall aliens as they spoke to each other. Jane spoke fast and always seemed either excited or anxious or jittery. The old pen tapper spoke slowly, the grunts and throaty sounds of their language coming out in a calm, measured rhythm. Pavlov's voice had been deep, faster than the old pen tapper but slower than Jane. John had yelled obscenities at them when he could but they'd ignored him, or written it off as unintelligible mumblings of whatever animal species John belonged to. They couldn't make him talk. They didn't understand him anyway.

"John?"

John blinked, and Carson Beckett's face came back into focus. He was home. _Home!_ He was safe. Ronon looked at him with open concern and anger, and John wondered what he had done to make the big man mad. Maybe it was the not-talking thing. John took a deep breath and reached a weak hand toward him, which Ronon caught and kept in a firm grip. John wanted to say something, to tell them he was fine, but his throat constricted and snuffed out any sound.

His eyelids grew heavy and his battle against sleep was short lived. He heard Beckett stand up, fiddle with some of the equipment near the bed, then leave. Ronon squeezed his hand and nodded. John felt childish that Ronon holding his hand was so comforting, and he shuddered at the memory of Jane carrying him through the hallways, his head resting on her shoulder like a small child's.

_Ronon would so kick her ass._ He smiled slightly at that thought as it followed him into slumber.

* * *

Ronon left the infirmary sometime in the early morning hours, exhausted. When he met up with Teyla and McKay at lunch, they had both stopped in on Sheppard at various times throughout the morning. He'd been asleep the whole time, but Beckett had said the fever was gone, the bruises were fading, and the incision was healing slowly but nicely.

Ronon stopped by in the afternoon before the hand-to-hand fighting class he taught to some of the Marines, and still Sheppard slept. Beckett assured him it wasn't that unusual and that the rest would help his friend recover and heal. Ronon had nodded, not quite forgetting the haunted look in Sheppard's eyes the night before.

Ronon took out some of his frustration on the Marines, who limped and stumbled out of his class a couple of hours later. He checked in on Sheppard again and was told the Colonel had woken up briefly but had slipped back to sleep without a word a few minutes later. At dinner, Teyla and McKay argued over the quality of some movie that Ronon kept missing the title of. He sat with them in silence, letting their voices swirl around him in the crowded, chatter-and-laughter filled mess hall. He could almost convince himself that things were getting back to normal.

In the middle of the night, he found himself again sitting in the chair next to Sheppard's bed in the dark infirmary. The night duty nurses nodded in greeting but otherwise did not try to kick him out of the infirmary or shoe him back to his room for some much needed sleep. He sat with his arms folded and his legs sprawled—appearing relaxed to anyone who did not know him.

But he wasn't relaxed. He was tired yet wired, feeling a buzzing energy in his body. He fought the urge to tear through Atlantis screaming. He'd asked Teyla if Sheppard was going to be okay, if he'd go back to the way he was, if they'd done enough. Now he wondered if he—Ronon, the runner, the survivor—would be okay when everything was said and done.

Ronon leaned forward in his chair rubbing his hands in his face. He breathed deeply through his nose, trying to quiet the rage coursing through him. He'd been angry before. He'd even freaked out before, but this felt different. This hadn't happened to him; it had happened to Sheppard. Why was it affecting him so deeply?

He looked up at his friend. The bed was slightly inclined, and Sheppard looked like he had slid over toward one side. The nurses had shaved his face again, making him look young and fragile. The little bit of light overhead cast deep shadows across the angular bones in his face.

He was slumped over, and his head had rolled almost off the pillow. Ronon looked around for a nurse, but in the middle of the night, there were few around and none within immediate sight. The position looked uncomfortable, and Ronon could just imagine the crick in Sheppard's neck if he spent all night like that.

He stood up, wondering if he could lift Sheppard just enough to straighten him out a little bit without actually waking him up. Nursing really wasn't his thing, but he reached under his friend's arms, acutely aware of the IVs and tubes connected to him. Sheppard was frighteningly light, and Ronon's stomach clenched in anger again.

He had just pulled his arms away when Sheppard groaned and shifted in the bed. Ronon froze, but he almost wanted the colonel to wake up.

Sheppard's eyes fluttered open and darted around the dark infirmary before settling on Ronon's towering figure. Ronon rested a hand on his shoulder and grinned.

"Hey, Sheppard."

He sat down, pulling the chair across the floor. He cringed at the sound it made. Sheppard jerked, lifting his head slightly.

"How are you?" Ronon asked, suddenly at a loss of what to say. Sheppard turned toward him, taking a shuddering breath. Ronon could see he was starting to tremble a little, and he gripped his arm while pressing the call button.

"Hang on, buddy," he said.

Sheppard swallowed. "C-c-cc'ld," he rasped.

"What?" Ronon started in surprise, leaning forward just as a nurse arrived.

"C-cold."

Ronon glanced up at the nurse, who smiled and promised to return quickly with blankets. Sheppard was shaking slightly in the bed. The nurse returned with two warm blankets, which she and Ronon spread out over the sick man.

"Better?" she asked, and Sheppard nodded in response. Ronon grinned, feeling a little bit of weight lift from his chest. The nurse flipped through the chart attached to the end of the bed, jotting down a few notes, and then left Ronon and Sheppard alone.

"You warm?" Ronon asked after a minute or two. Sheppard had snuggled into the blankets but kept his eyes on the Satedan. He nodded again. Ronon noticed that he wasn't trembling as badly as he had been a moment earlier. A few seconds later, Sheppard relaxed completely, asleep again but looking a little less haunted and a little less terrified.

* * *

"Good morning, lad," Beckett said, then looked at his watch. "Actually, it's afternoon now, so good afternoon, John."

John smiled a little, rolling his head to look at the doctor and blinking away the last vestiges of sleep. Warm afternoon sunlight poured into the infirmary, and nurses and doctors bustled around doing their day-to-day tasks. Beckett peeled back the blankets wrapped tightly around his patient, then pulled down the gown. John shivered a little at the cool air that touched his skin.

"I just need to check the incision," the doctor said. John lay quietly as Beckett prodded the wound, then listened to his heart and lungs. It didn't hurt nearly as much as it had before, and he wondered how many drugs the doctor had him on.

"That's healing nicely," Beckett smiled. "Are you in any pain? Cold?"

John could feel himself shivering harder, turning into all out trembling. "Cold," he whispered, then coughed. His mouth felt dry, and he swallowed to try and get some moisture into his throat. Beckett pulled the blankets up around John's shoulders and tucked them in, adding an extra blanket on top for good measure. He raised the head of the bed as well, and held out a cup of water. John sucked on the straw in relief, almost whimpering when Beckett pulled the cup away too soon.

"Not too much now. Your stomach's been through enough abuse; we can't have you throwing up and undoing all the progress you've made so far."

John nodded. Throwing up would definitely be bad. He shuddered at the memory of the bowl of green leaves and the litter box and the brown gunk being pumped into his stomach. Beckett squeezed his shoulder and sat down in the ever-present chair next to the bed.

"You up for a little chat?" he asked.

John nodded, snuggling deeper into the mound of blankets around him. Heat pooled around his body and he relaxed, enjoying more than ever before the feeling of fabric against his skin. The little strip of leather Jane and the other aliens had given him as a blanket had never been enough, especially when he'd been stripped down to his boxers.

"You've been through quite a lot in the last few weeks," Beckett began, "but I'm happy to say you're healing and you'll probably be out of the infirmary before you know it."

Beckett paused, as if contemplating where to start. John turned his head a little and felt the slight tug of the feeding tube on his face. He realized that the beard that had grown out during his captivity had been shaved off.

"The bruises are fading. Your left ankle was badly sprained, but the swelling has gone down considerably. That should heal completely in another few weeks." Beckett pointed to John's chest. "The incision is healing as well. The cut was deep, but we got to it pretty quickly so the scarring should be minimal."

John jerked at the sudden memory of being strapped down to the table, naked and helpless, and Jane standing over him with a scalpel. He heard his heart rate increase on a monitor somewhere nearby. Beckett leaned forward, forcing John to turn toward him and look him in the eye.

"We got you out of there, lad. Hold onto that."

John took a deep breath and forced himself to relax back into the bed. He nodded again and Beckett leaned back in the chair.

"Did they feed you at all while you were there?"

John wrapped his arms around his body under the covers, careful of the incision on his chest and feeling a chill come over him despite the blankets. "Nothing edible," he mumbled.

Beckett was already nodding. "As I suspected. You're making good progress, but you've been through a lot and I don't want to rush things. I'm going to leave the feeding tube in a little bit longer."

John could feel his eyes growing heavy. He'd been awake for probably fifteen minutes, but already his body was begging him to give in to the exhaustion.

"There's one more thing I need to check, but I wanted to talk to you about it first." Beckett suddenly looked nervous. John stared back in apprehension.

"We detected a substance similar to the 'radioactive' compound you got a dose of when that sting ray creature bit you a few months ago. It seems to be heavily concentrated in your right leg, and I believe it's related to an interaction between the remaining sting ray venom and something you were injected with…" Beckett's voice trailed off.

John closed his eyes at the memories that assaulted him. Pavlov throwing him into the wall. Pavlov hitting him across the back until it was numb. Pavlov jamming the electric prod into him. Pavlov shooting him in the right leg with the tranquilizer gun. Paralysis seeping into his muscles and crawling up his limbs over and over and over again.

"John?" Beckett's voice broke through. The doctor was leaning over him with both hands on his shoulders, shaking him. He'd obviously said John's name a few times.

John sucked in a ragged breath. Alarms were wailing above his head and a nurse suddenly appeared on the other side. She was speaking to him as well and pressing a clear mask over his face, but John could not focus on the words enough to understand what she was saying. His chest felt tight and the room spun around him nauseatingly.

"Breathe, John. Nice, deep breaths. You're alright, lad." Beckett's voice hovered close to his ear.

John could feel the flow of oxygen on his face and he gulped in the air. The tightness around his chest eased just as the alarms on the monitors quieted down. He concentrated on nothing more than just breathing, but he could feel the pulling achiness of old bruises and the sharp burning of the incision on his chest and stomach.

He shifted in the bed a little and looked down at his right leg. He remembered clearly Pavlov bursting into his cage and shooting him in the leg. He had thought for sure he was dead, but had been shocked when it had just been a dart that hit him and not a bullet. He could almost see the menace in Pavlov's dark eyes as the alien crawled toward him, even as John lost all sensation in his leg.

Lost all sensation in his leg. He squirmed in the bed, hearing the heart monitor beeping frantically again. He couldn't feel his leg. It was there, he could see it, but he couldn't move it. With all his other aches and pains, he hadn't noticed the total lack of feeling in his leg. He pushed at the blankets, desperate to unbury his arms.

"Can't feel it," he choked out.

"Aye, son. I know. I need you to relax," Beckett soothed, pulling the blankets down so John could free his arms.

"Carson?" John's voice sounded small and tentative, even to his own ears.

"The substance is messing with the nerves and muscles in your leg. The blood tests show that it is diminishing, but it will take some time. John—" Beckett held John's head in place, forcing him to meet the doctor's eyes. "John, look at me. I am fully confident that your leg will recover. Do you understand?"

John nodded. He could feel himself shaking again as he collapsed back against the pillows. Beckett pulled the blankets up around his shoulders and ran a few tests on his leg, which John could see but not feel. He forced down the panic building in the pit of his stomach throughout the test. If the doctor said he was fine, he had to believe him. He had to hold onto that.

"Tranq," John said suddenly.

"What's that?" Beckett asked, his attention mostly on John's leg.

"Hit with a tranq dart in that leg."

Beckett looked up, contemplating. "That may be it," he mumbled as he jotted some notes down in his patient's chart.

John nodded. The exhaustion was back with a vengeance. Beckett was saying something else to him, urging him to stay awake a little bit longer, but it was impossible to fight off sleep cocooned in the warm blankets, and John drifted off to the sound of Beckett's lilting accent.

TBC…


	9. Chapter 9

_Chapter 9_

John woke up again later that day, then again the next day, and again the next. Each time he managed to stay up a little bit longer, and he could finally feel some of the weakness leaving his body. Beckett had eventually pulled out the feeding tube, and John had almost cried in relief. He'd hated to admit it, but that tube in particular had reminded him too much of the tubes he'd been subjected to while in captivity.

McKay, Teyla, Ronon, and Elizabeth would pop in on him at various times throughout the day, but at dinner his whole team would arrive. John graduated from clear broth to thicker, more substantial foods, and his strength increased exponentially. He even found himself laughing once again with the rest of his team.

Kate Heightmeyer had showed up eventually, as John had expected. He'd hated to admit he needed to talk to the base psychiatrist, but Kate had made it easy on him and seemed content half the time to just sit in silence with him. John had hardly said a word to anyone at first, but gradually he had relaxed, and with physical healing well on its way, mental healing began. He had listened to Ronon describe the stampede that had separated them in the first place, then to McKay's description of their rescue efforts. Teyla had talked about her own injuries and fear for John's safety.

John's story spilled out of him in quiet moments with Kate or Beckett or his team, and only in pieces. His friends seemed to know there was more to the story than what he was telling, but they respected his privacy and need to come to terms with things on his own. The memories were too fresh and too strong for him to talk about it all or all at once, but somehow, saying them out loud was diminishing their power. Night was the worst. He'd lost count how many times he woke up screaming and shaking from horrific nightmares of his ordeal with the tall aliens, but he noticed that Ronon was there every single time.

Ronon was there a lot. As John grew stronger, he noticed that the Satedan was almost hovering around him. Ronon chatted and laughed along with everyone else, but there was something in his eyes that caught John's attention—a look of haunted anger that he couldn't quite cover up. Whenever John tried to broach the subject with him, however, the rage in the man's eyes would flare and John would flinch at the sight of Ronon jamming his fists under his arms.

"We're going to take it slow, John, and I want you to let us do all the work," Beckett announced one morning. John had just finished his breakfast and was thumbing through a magazine. He looked up at the doctor in pleased surprise. John had started physical therapy a few days before, and Beckett had promised him they'd get him up and moving around soon.

"Slow, got it," John grunted, tossing the magazine aside. He watched Beckett move around the side of the infirmary bed, unhook the IV from John's hand, and cap off the top. It was the last of the tubes and wires still attached to him.

"Can't you just take it out completely?"

"Not yet, lad."

John forced himself to relax, and he leaned his head against the pillow propped up behind him. The head of the bed had been raised so that he was sitting up almost straight, and he stared down at his leg.

"Alright," Beckett said as a nurse—a former Marine medic—walked over to them. "Grant, you keep him steady while I swing his legs down."

"Yes, sir," the nurse replied, helping John sit up and sliding an arm behind his back. John reached up, grabbing the man's shoulder, suddenly apprehensive. Beckett swung John's legs over the side of the bed, then reached up to help the nurse—Grant—keep John upright.

John, for his part, felt fine if a little lightheaded and was getting impatient with the pace of this whole process. He was weak—he could feel it in the lingering shakiness whenever he had been sitting up for too long—but he _was_ getting stronger.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine," John responded breathlessly. Okay, maybe not that much stronger.

Beckett and Grant leaned him forward, shifting John's weight until he slid off the edge of the bed. His knees buckled the second his feet hit the floor, but the doctor and nurse were ready for that and kept him upright.

"When you feel ready, try to put a little bit of weight on your left leg," Beckett urged.

John had a tight grip on both people, and he grit his teeth as he attempted to hold a little bit of his own weight on his good leg. He could feel himself shaking with the effort already. His right leg dangled uselessly, completely numb. He tried to move it so that it was underneath him a little more, but the effort was pointless and he grunted in frustration.

"How are you holding up, John?" Beckett asked.

"Okay," he mumbled, trying not to let the exhaustion he was feeling sneak into his voice. He was starting to feel nauseous. He glanced down at this leg.

No pain, no achiness, nothing. Normally, that would be a good thing, but this time it had him freaked out. Whatever the substance in his leg was, it had wreaked havoc. He couldn't feel it or move it much beyond swinging it slightly from his hip, and despite everyone's reassurances that he would eventually be fine, the thought of never being able to use it again had him more than a little anxious. More than one of his nightmares had been about him losing his leg completely.

Sweat dripped down the side of John's face and he could feel his left leg starting to give out. The sprained ankle was not completely healed, and it was starting to ache under his weight. He gripped the shoulders of the two men standing next to him a little tighter. The plan had been to move around the infirmary, maybe sit up in a chair, but now he was wondering if he'd even make it to the chair.

"Doc?" John breathed out.

"It's alright, John. We've got you."

They moved forward slowly. John hopped on his left leg then half dragged, half swung his right leg behind him. Grant's grip tightened, and John was glad Beckett had picked the big Marine to help hold him up.

"What's up with Ronon?" John asked, concentrating on the floor in front of him. He spoke without thinking, saying anything to keep his mind off the task at hand.

"Ronon?" Beckett sounded genuinely confused.

"Yeah," John grunted. "He's always here, especially at night. Not that I'm complaining or anything. He just seems a little subdued."

"This is Ronon we're talking about. He's not exactly the most talkative of people."

John's left leg folded under him at the next step, and Beckett and Grant nearly lost their grip on him. They lifted him almost completely off the ground as they turned around. They'd made it halfway across the room.

"That's good for now," Beckett said to Grant.

"I mean," John continued, forcing the words out between breaths, "he's been a little more subdued and quiet than normal. He usually talks more—" John gasped as his leg gave out again, and he cursed at the uselessness of his dead leg.

"More than he has been," he finished, panting breathlessly. Beckett and the nurse moved quickly to cover the last few feet, and the next thing John knew, he was sitting back in his bed. Grant gently lifted his legs onto the bed, and Beckett wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm.

John watched them quietly as he struggled to catch his breath. The nurse pulled the blankets up over his legs and waist and was gently lowering the bed down to less of an angle. Beckett had the stethoscope out and pressed against his chest. John could feel his eyes beginning to droop already from the exhaustion, and the nausea from trying to walk around churned in his stomach.

"Try not to pant," Beckett said quietly as he moved the stethoscope to John's lungs.

John tried and ended up pressing his arms against his stomach. He could just feel the thin bandages over the incision through his scrub top.

"Feel sick," he groaned.

Grant turned stepped away but was back almost immediately and handing John a kidney dish. John gripped it, and tried to take a deep breath. He was sick of being tired and weak. Beckett hooked the IV back up, and John glanced down at the sudden sensation of cold racing through his veins.

"That should help with the nausea," the doctor assured him. "We'll try walking again a little later."

"What about Ronon?" John mumbled.

Beckett pulled out a thermometer and held it in John's ear until it beeped. He nodded in satisfaction at the number, then looked down at his patient. "You'll have to talk to him about that."

John nodded, his eyes closing almost against his will as his stomach began to settle. Beckett removed the bowl from John's loosening grip and pulled the blankets up around his shoulders, tucking them in. The sounds of the infirmary quickly faded as he slipped into a deep sleep.

* * *

For a reason Ronon could not even begin to explain, he felt compelled to check on Sheppard constantly. He knew Sheppard had noticed, but every time his friend had brought it up, he'd manage to deflect the conversation to other topics. Sheppard would pin him down one of these days, when he was stronger, and Ronon hoped he had an answer for the man at that point.

Sheppard recovered slowly, looking happy and relieved the day Beckett finally released him to his quarters. Ronon had been in the infirmary and watching his friend maneuver gingerly around the infirmary on the crutches. His movements had been slow and careful, but his smile had been genuine.

The numbness in his leg had graduated to a constant sense of pins and needles, and while Sheppard had been glad that feeling was returning, Ronon had seen him grimace more than once in the days following. The Satedan would catch the colonel rubbing his leg with his hand as if that had would accelerate the healing. Muscle control was returning a little slower, however. Beckett had released Sheppard to his quarters as long as the man promised to use a wheelchair for longer distance and the crutches only for getting around his room. Sheppard had happily agreed, and Ronon had laughed knowing that the man would have agreed to anything at that point.

The incision the length of Sheppard's chest and stomach was a bright pink line against pale skin, but it too was healing. Ronon felt a jolt of hatred toward the aliens that had caused it every time he caught a glimpse of it, but it was getting easier and easier to shove the anger aside and focus on the more positive points of Sheppard's healing. The bruises were all but gone, the ankle completely healed, and weeks under Beckett's care had even bulked up his skeletal thinness.

The internal wounds were healing a little more slowly. Even a week after being released from the infirmary, Ronon had caught glimpses of them in the way Sheppard's eyes would dart around a crowded room and in the way he would jerk and shudder whenever someone came up behind him. Those moments, though, were becoming less and less frequent, and Ronon could finally believe John Sheppard was well on his way to complete recovery.

So he was surprised, a few weeks after Sheppard had been released from the infirmary, when McKay came to him in a total panic. He couldn't find Sheppard and wanted Ronon to help. They collected Teyla along the way and searched Atlantis. Sheppard had not answered his radio, and they had not found him in his room, the mess hall, the rec room, the gate room, or anywhere along his favorite pier. They'd split up then to search the less familiar corners of the inhabited parts of the city.

Ronon walked quietly down a hallway. This part of the city was dark and empty, and as he walked, he heard a squawk from one of the doors he passed. He paused, ducking his head into the room to see a scaly, purple bird in a cage, chirping and pecking at its food dish. Ronon stepped back into the hall and looked to the last door on the end.

Sheppard was there. He knew it suddenly and with absolute confidence. He walked forward with purpose, passing closed doors before stopping in front of the door in question. "Doctor Lane" was scribbled on a piece of paper and taped to the wall next to it.

Ronon palmed the door open and entered the dark room. The aquariums lining the wall were lit, and Ronon easily spotted Sheppard's silhouette at one end leaning against a set of crutches. Ronon walked over to his friend, noticing that Sheppard's face was pale and tired looking, and he remembered standing in this same spot with this same man so many months before. The aquarium Sheppard was staring into was empty.

"How'd you know I was down here?" Sheppard asked after a few minutes.

"Didn't. McKay couldn't find you and freaked out when you didn't answer your radio. We've been looking for you for the past hour."

"Sorry," John muttered. He stared into the empty tank, hardly blinking.

"You okay?" Ronon asked. He barely caught Sheppard's shrug in the darkness.

Ronon nodded, not sure of what else to say. He'd heard as much of the story regarding Sheppard's ordeal as the man had revealed. Captivity could make you think and worry about strange things, especially with the kind of torture Sheppard had endured.

"What happened to it?" Sheppard suddenly asked.

"What?"

"That thing—that sting ray thing."

"That doctor dissected it, remember?"

He saw Sheppard nod his head. Lane had dissected the sting ray months ago.

"That's how we found you," Ronon said.

Sheppard finally tore his gaze away from the empty tank. "What?"

"Didn't McKay ever tell you? It was that weird radiation-not radiation stuff that creature injected in your leg."

Sheppard rubbed his forehead. "Maybe. I don't know. I can't remember. I remember that planet messed with our Ancient technology."

"Yeah. McKay figured out a way to adjust our scanners to look for the sting ray stuff. It was the only thing he could get the jumper to pick up on. At first, we couldn't even find that, but then the energy readings or whatever kind of spiked." Ronon paused. "Still took us another day to track you down and get you out of there."

Sheppard swallowed, taking in the information, and Ronon connected the bits of stories Sheppard had told them. One day before rescue, "Pavlov" had thrown open the cage door and shot him with a tranquilizer gun—the tranq that had interacted with the leftover sting ray venom, that had made his leg numb and useless, that had caused McKay's sensors to spike. Twisted.

"So, in a way, that sting ray thing saved my life."

Ronon shrugged. The sting ray, not the dark-haired alien with the tranq gun. Ronon could no more give the cruel alien credit than Sheppard could. He flashed on his friend strapped to the table, looking for all the world like he was dead.

Sheppard looked around the lab, his eyes lingering on some of the other creatures swimming in tanks. "What are we doing?" he whispered.

Ronon winced, hearing the question he had asked Teyla soon after they'd rescued Sheppard, before they knew whether they'd saved him in time. "We're just trying to do our best," he repeated, remembering Teyla's answer.

"What if it isn't good enough?"

He had no answer to that question. He swallowed, not knowing what to say, and felt the rage that had become such a constant companion to him over the last few weeks. Next to him, Sheppard shuddered and ran his hand along the edge of the empty tank.

_Damn those aliens, _Ronon thought. _Damn those bastards that did this to my friend._ Sheppard looked suddenly small and vulnerable in the room, and the control Ronon had carefully built around his fury suddenly crumbled.

"Aaaarrrgggghhhhhh!" he screamed and slammed a fist into the empty water tank. The glass around it cracked but did not break. It was enough, however, for jets of water to start spraying out of it.

"Feel better?" Sheppard asked in the ensuing silence.

Ronon glared. "Not really." He shook out his hand, trying to ignore throbbing knuckles.

"I kind of do."

Ronon snorted, then laughed when he caught the grin on Sheppard's face. "We should go find Teyla and McKay," the Satedan said and Sheppard nodded. Ronon clapped his friend on the back, squeezing the back of his neck affectionately before dropping his arm. Sheppard straightened up and took a deep breath.

"Yeah, let's go," he said.

Ronon glanced one last time into the room with the ghostly light from the aquariums, then shut the door behind them when he and Sheppard walked out. Their progress was slow as Sheppard's crutches clacked along the hall, but Ronon was in no hurry. He rubbed his hand.

"Did you break your hand?"

"No."

"You should probably have Beckett look at it anyway."

Ronon grunted. They'd reached the transporter and Ronon waited for Sheppard to pass him and carefully turn himself around in the small space. His leg swung slightly as he leaned forward on the crutches.

"You know, maybe you should talk to someone about those anger management issues," Sheppard drawled.

Ronon poked at the map behind his friend's head, taking them back toward the busier corners of Atlantis—back to Teyla and McKay and the clatter of plates in the mess hall as dinner time hit and the laughter and chatter of scientists and soldiers and friends drifting throughout the city.

"I talk to you," Ronon finally said.

The doors swished closed, and in a flash, opened up to a familiar hallway. Teyla and McKay stood in front of them with their hands on their hips.

Sheppard smiled. "Yeah." _Same here._

END

_A/N: And that's it! Thank you so much for reading and reviewing. I've enjoyed hearing from all of you and appreciated the support. Now that the story is complete, if you have any remaining questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Thanks again, and enjoy!_


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